This week we are joined by David J. Leonard, professor of Critical Culture, Gender, & Race Studies at Washington State University and author of After Artest: The NBA and the Assault on Blackness. We discuss the significance of Jason Collins’s article in Sports Illustrated announcing that he is gay, the media’s reaction to him coming out, and sport as a site key site for the performance of gender and sexuality.
This week we talk with Catherine Squires about her September 2012 article in American Quarterly, Coloring in the Bubble: Perspectives from Black-Oriented Media on the (Latest) Economic Disaster.
In this episode, we have a conversation with William Alexander. He is slightly different type of social theorist than we normally have on the podcast. Will teaches in the English Department at the Minnesota College of Arts and Design and last November he won the prestigious national book award for his first novel Goblin Secrets and the Earphones Award for narrating his book. Today Will is joining us to discuss the powers and politics of fantasy, and the relationship between fiction and the social world.
This week we talk with Shadd Maruna and Fergus McNeill about their documentary project, The Road From Crime. This documentary was produced as part of the larger Discovering Desistance Project, which aims to share knowledge and improve understanding of why people desist from crime. First, we hear a clip from the opening sequence of the film, then we talk with Shadd and Fergus themselves as they describe the process of producing this project.
In this episode we talk with Michael Schudson, author of The Sociology of News, recently released in its second edition. Schudson is the author of seven books and co-editor of three others concerning the history and sociology of the American news media, advertising, popular culture, Watergate and cultural memory. We discuss the changing nature of journalism, the effect of emerging technology on traditional news practices, and his new research on transparency as American value and policy.
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