Series 2 (2021)
New episodes coming every Tuesday between September and December 2021.
September 28, 2021
Brown Girls, White Feminism, and the Necropolitics of War (with Moon Charania)
In this week’s episode, guest Moon Charania discusses her article “Ethical Whiteness and the Death Drive: White Women as the New War Hero,” which examines how contemporary films use white women protagonists to justify drone warfare and military intervention in the Middle East. Charania argues that media mobilize the figure of the suffering brown girl to elicit empathy and to assuage Western audiences’ guilt about collateral damage in neo-colonial wars. Through what Charania calls “ethical whiteness”, Global North citizens can promote humanitarian causes to rescue Global South brown girls from numerous atrocities without interrogating how their own governments are responsible for creating the conditions for such atrocities.
September 21, 2021
The End of the American Media Empires (with Michael Curtin)
In this week’s episode, guest Michael Curtin discusses his article “Post Americana: Twenty-First Century Media Globalization” which argues that, after nearly a century of American hegemony, media industries are today growing more plastic and complicated, scaling their ambitions and operations in an increasingly dynamic environment filled with new technologies, shifting audiences, and emerging economies.
Series 1 (2020)
September 29, 2020
Digital Cartography and the Promise of Interactivity (with Jason Farman)
In this week’s episode, guest Jason Farman discusses his article “Mapping the Digital Empire: Google Earth and the Process of Postmodern Cartography” which analyzes how the political and social implications of cartography take on new significance in the digital age, with the proliferation of interactive maps and geographic information systems (GIS).
October 6, 2020
The Weather after Fukushima (with Laura Beltz Imaoka)
In this week’s episode, guest Laura Beltz Imaoka discusses her chapter “Rain with a Chance of Radiation: Forecasting Local and Global Risk after Fukushima,” which traces the news coverage of the fallout of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
October 13, 2020
Indigenous Cinema in North America (with Karrmen Crey)
In this week’s episode, guest Karrmen Crey discusses her article “Screen Text and Institutional Context: Indigenous Film Production and Academic Research Institutions” which analyzes post-secondary institutions and the intellectual traditions that shape how Indigenous filmmakers engage the politics and ethics of representation.
October 20, 2020
How to Translate a Genre (with Michelle Cho)
In this week’s episode, guest Michelle Cho discusses her article “Genre, Translation, and Transnational Cinema” which analyzes Kim Jee-woon’s Korean western film The Good, the Bad, the Weird as emblematic of both the transnational adaptation of popular genres and the international rise of South Korean cinema in the early 21st century.
October 27, 2020
Zombies in Cuba (with Bianka Ballina)
In this week’s episode, guest Bianka Ballina discusses her article “Juan of the Dead: Anxious Consumption and Zombie Cinema in Cuba,” which analyzes the complex material and ideological transformations in Cuban film over the past two decades.
November 10, 2020
The Sounds of Politics in South Asia (with Aswin Punathambekar and Sriram Mohan)
In this week’s episode, guests Aswin Punathambekar and Sriram Mohan discuss their article “A Sound Bridge: Listening for the Political in a Digital Age” which analyzes how catchy sounds become sonic cues for political participation.
November 17, 2020
Anime against Neoliberalism in Chile (with Camilo Diaz Pino)
In this week’s episode, guest Camilo Diaz Pino discusses his article “Weaponizing collective energy: Dragon Ball Z in the anti-neoliberal Chilean protest movement” which analyzes how the 2011 student-led protests in Chile borrowed icons from the popular anime show to foster a sense of collective struggle.
November 24, 2020
Translating Television in Latin America (with Laurena Bernabo)
In this week’s episode, guest Laurena Bernabo discusses her article “Progressive Television, Translation, and Globalization: The Case of Glee in Latin America” which analyzes the behind-the-scenes production process to dub the TV show Glee into Spanish for Latin American audiences.
December 1, 2020
The Enduring Sentimiento of Chavela Vargas (with Lorena Alvarado)
In this week’s episode, guest Lorena Alvarado discusses her article “Never Late: Unwelcome Desires and Diasporas in Chavela Vargas’ Last Works” which analyzes how the last two albums of musical performer Chavela Vargas, Cupaima (2006) and ¡Por mi Culpa! (2010), continue making aesthetic choices that de-form the classic repertoire of rancheras and boleros.
December 8, 2020
Liberation and Contagion in the Music of MIA (with Ronak Kapadia)
In this week’s episode, guest Ronak Kapadia discusses his article “Sonic Contagions: Bird Flu, Bandung, and the Queer Cartographies of MIA” which analyzes the work of Sri Lankan diasporic musician, producer, and designer Mathangi Maya Arulpragasam (a.k.a. MIA).
December 15, 2020
Refugee Selfies and the Media of Migration (with Eszter Zimanyi)
In this week’s episode, guest Eszter Zimanyi discusses her article “Digital Transience: Emplacement and Authorship in Refugee Selfies” which analyzes “refugee selfies” collected from Instagram’s Explore Places map feature as an alternative viewpoint on the so-called 2015 European refugee crisis.
