NB: This is part of research that will be published in a special issue of Popular Culture Studies Journal focusing upon Star Trek: Enterprise which I am guest-editing (CFP open until 15 June). As a lifelong fan of the Star Trek franchise and a lifelong queer person (even if it took me a few decades to figure it out),[i] it is hard to overstate the joy I felt upon learning that Star Trek: Lower Decks (Paramount+

This talk explores the articulation of food and television through an analysis of the soap opera genre and their transmedia cookbooks. Whilst debates on food & literature and food & film have been researched extensively, the relationship of food & television remains relatively underexplored (Murray, 2012; Oren, 2003). This limited work has tended to focus on the cookery programme genre (Strange, 1998;

Last week, Kim Akass blogged about how the US press response to Adolescence (Netflix, 2025) made visible certain blind spots in a culture seemingly unable to identify that a particular kind of masculinity might be a problem. Akass read this very much through a prism of Trump, and I here want to continue this focus in order to add further consideration to the question of why a convicted felon was elected president by the American people.

Everyone is talking about Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne’s latest venture: the 4-part series, Adolescence, that hit Netflix screens on March 13 ^th . https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/videoplayback.mp4

A CREAM, University of Westminster Conference June 19th and 20th 2025, University of Westminster, Marylebone Campus, LONDON, NW1 5LS Organisers Dr. Christopher Hogg – C.Hogg@westminster.ac.uk (University of Westminster) Dr. Kate McNicholas Smith – K.McNicholassmith@westminster.ac.uk (University of Westminster) Dr. Douglas McNaughton – D.Mcnaughton@brighton.ac.uk (University of Brighton)

Cathrin Bengesser (Aarhus University) in conversation with Francesco Casetti (Yale University) This interview accompanies the translation of “From Paleo- to Neo-Television: A Semio-Pragmatic Approach” by Francesco Casetti and Roger Odin, which was originally published in French in 1990.

Trump is back in office, letting Elon Musk loose and apparently giving in to Russia’s demands as far as Ukraine is concerned, all the while looking to see if he can get access to Ukraine’s minerals. Climate mitigating legislation has been and will be slashed further, while Ulrich Merz, newly elected Chancellor of Germany, is calling for greater European defence spending: these are troubling times.

‘In the not-too-distant future…’ For those of us of a certain age and from a certain geographic range, the lyric above was likely heard being sung by a range of voices including Joel Hodgson, Mike Nelson and/or any number of robot associates.

Co-editors: Gábor Gergely, Júlia Havas, Victoria K. Pistivsek What is “Europe”? The term is far from self-evident. The emerging canon of Eastern European decolonial sociological scholarship shows that Europe is the product of the far-reaching legacies of global colonialism and ongoing ideological, cultural, and geopolitical contestations (Baker et al. 2024; Boatcă and Parvulescu 2020;

Because of the ambiguities inherent in the job, spy dramas tend to have morally grey characters, mutable moralities and can, though do not have to, engage in subversive critique of geopolitics and governments (cf Oldham 2017).

Original call here. Exploitation. Lowbrow. Cult. Underground. Trash. Poverty Row. Programmers. Pulp. Popular. Mass. … These descriptors of the “B” movie apply just as well to what we term “B-TV,” as they describe an aesthetics derived from the industrial realities that produced them.