Performance history, carefully read.
New Books in Performing Arts is a book-centered interview show for serious conversations about theater, music, dance, and performance history. Its episodes move from Roman entertainment culture to Tin Pan Alley, parish religion, postcolonial reading, and the uneasy archives of slavery and display.
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New Books in Performing Arts is a scholarly interview series about performance as history, method, and cultural evidence. It is built around books. That simple structure gives the show both focus and range, because each conversation starts with a publication and then follows the questions that made the research necessary. The pace is patient. Episodes often begin with an origin story, a key archive, or a framing question, then move outward into the larger claims a book is making. Conversations show how broad the field can be. Daniel Rachel discusses pop music, the swastika, and the Third Reich. Danielle Bainbridge turns to Millie Christine McCoy, enslavement, freak shows, and the problem of reading performance through the archive. John Kuhn’s episode uses early modern England to think about theatrical practice and the category of the pagan. Jessica Clark’s work brings ancient Roman theater and entertainment culture into view. Other episodes take up Yiddish dialect songs of Tin Pan Alley, dance in higher education, women’s dance and parish religion in England, and postcolonialism as a way of reading and teaching. The show is not casual arts chatter. It asks what performance reveals when the evidence is partial, uncomfortable, or historically distant. A dance in sacred space can become a question about gender and religious discipline. A popular song can carry political symbols and social anxieties. A theatrical category can become a sorting device for belief, difference, and empire. The interviews let scholars explain the route from example to argument. That makes the show useful for readers, students, teachers, and curious non-specialists who want access to academic work without losing its complexity. It is especially good at showing how books are made: through archives, revisions, teaching, uncertainty, and sustained attention. The result is a calm, serious guide to performance studies in motion.
Made for: For readers, students, teachers, and arts-minded listeners who want rigorous conversations about performance without jargon doing all the work. It especially suits people drawn to theater history, dance studies, music culture, archives, and cultural criticism.
What sets it apart: The show treats performance as a historical record, not just an art form. Its strength is the steady movement from a book’s concrete evidence into questions about power, belief, identity, education, and memory.
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Scholarly author interviews connect music and performance to archives, power, education, and the historical meanings attached to public culture.
New Books in Performing Arts approaches music through scholarship on performance, institutions, and historical memory. Its author interviews treat a book as the start of an inquiry, moving from a research question into the evidence, language, and ethical choices behind it.
Rock's swastika problem meets medieval parish dancing when your curiosity refuses departmental boundaries.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A careful conversation about how a dance book takes shape through revision, chapter order, and scholarly exchange.
Karen Shoup and Sherry Barr shape the episode around how a dance book is built, with Renee Garris keeping the focus on chapter order, revisions, and the way the authors' thinking shifts along the way.
A careful look at how dance moves from sacred space into questions of women and discipline.
The discussion traces a clear shift in parish religion from dance in sacred space to women, then to sexual conduct and clerical discipline. It shows how theological writing can sit beside warnings about gossiping, sleeping, and playing board games in church, which gives the…
A literary scene turns decolonizing from an abstract term into an ongoing practice of thought and education.
Shorid Bhattacharya's conversation about Post-Colonialism Now: Literature, Reading, Decolonizing turns a debate over terminology into something more practical: how decolonizing can take shape through reading, teaching, and argument.
A carte de visite of Millie Christine McCoy opens a searching conversation about performance, slavery, and the archive.
A small black-and-white carte de visite anchors this thoughtful episode on slavery, spectacle, and performance as they survive through paper and photographs.
A music-history discussion about the swastika, silence, and responsibility when the symbol reaches the stage.
Daniel Rachel's conversation with Brandley Morgan treats the swastika in music culture as a question of historical memory and shared responsibility.
TV talk with craft memory and feeling.
Commercial filmmaking, minus the mystique.
Chicago critics DeRogatis and Kot pair new-album reviews with deep dives into records like Rumours.
Billboard's Keith Caulfield and Katie Atkinson break down the week's Hot 100 and 200 charts.
Daniel Rachel discusses his book 'This Ain't Rock 'n' Roll: Pop Music, the Swastika, and the Third Reich' with host Bradley Morgan.
Danielle Bainbridge discusses her book 'Currencies of Cruelty,' which explores the intersection of slavery and performance through the lives of conjoined twins Millie Christine McCoy.
Michelle Bigenho and Henry Stobart explain how Heritage Fever examines Bolivian laws that designate music, dances, and places as cultural heritage.
Jingyi Li interviews University of Utah assistant professor Ashton Lazarus about Performing Transgression: Crowds and Bodies in Heian Japan, a Harvard University Press study of non-elite performance from the eighth through twelfth centuries.
An interview with author Daniel Rachel about his book exploring the connections between pop music, the swastika, and Nazi Germany.
This episode features an interview with Danielle Bainbridge about her book 'Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive', exploring how enslavement intersects with performance through historical archives.
This episode features an interview with Professor John Kuhn about his 2024 book 'Making Pagans', which explores how theatrical practices in early modern England shaped the concept of paganism and comparative religion.
This episode introduces an exhibition titled 'Jewface' that explores Yiddish dialect songs from Tin Pan Alley, curated by Eddie Portnoy at the Constantiner Gallery, aiming to provoke thought about Jewish history and culture.
This episode features an interview with Dr.
Renee Garris welcomes Karen Shoup and Sherry Barr to talk about their book on dance in higher education.
The host and guest focus on dance in parish religion.
New Books in Performing Arts interviews Sourit Bhattacharya about Postcolonialism Now: Literature, Reading, Decolonising, an Orient BlackSwan 2024 book about reading as a decolonizing practice.
This episode features an interview with scholar Sharon Marcus discussing the drama of celebrity, drawing from her academic background in cultural history and literature.
This episode features an interview with author Matthew Kennedy about his 2024 book 'On Elizabeth Taylor: An Opinionated Guide,' exploring Taylor's films and legacy in Hollywood.
This episode features a conversation between playwright Bess Wohl and poet Honor Moore about Wohl's play 'Liberation' and Moore's book 'Women's Liberation', exploring the women's movement's literary roots and intergenerational connections.
This episode features an interview with Elliot Kalan about his book 'Joke Farming: How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense', discussing his motivations for writing it and insights into comedy writing.
This episode features an interview with Christina Lane about her biography 'Phantom Lady,' which explores the life and work of Joan Harrison, a Hollywood producer and overlooked collaborator of Alfred Hitchcock.