Popular Culture Review 30.1 • Winter 2019 Book Review
Flavors of Empire : Food and the Making of Thai America . Padoongpatt , Mark . University of California Press , 2017 . 270 pp .
ISBN : 978-0520293748
Vibrator Nation : How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure . Comella , Lynn . Duke University Press , 2018 . 294 pp .
ASIN : B074TCX2HZ
Reviewed by Jarret Keene University of Nevada , Las Vegas
I don ’ t believe it ’ s an overstatement to say that the Interdisciplinary , Gender , and Ethnic Studies department at the University of Nevada , Las Vegas , offers one of the most progressive and productive collections of cultural scholars and social historians in all of higher education . From Dr . Erika Abad ( who teaches a class on the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical Hamilton with an eye toward Latinx presence in pop culture ) to professor Tim Gauthier ( currently writing a book and publishing articles devoted to issues of community and immunity in the Robert Kirkman graphic-novel series The Walking Dead ) to three-time National Poetry Slam champion and creative scholar Javon Johnson ( co-editor of The End of Chiraq : A Literary Mixtape , just out from Northwestern University Press ), the list of accomplishments by these writers and thinkers leaves me in awe and suffering from a case of impostor syndrome mixed with , well , envy .
247 doi : 10.18278 / pcr . 30.1.14