About this episode

In this bonus episode, Jason interviews historian Whitney Strub about his scholarship and new book on Robert Kramer and radical cinema.

In this bonus episode, Jason interviews the historian Whitney Strub about his scholarship and his new book Films That Explode Like Grenades: Robert Kramer and the Search for a Radical Cinema , just published by University of Chicago Press. The book examines the New Left and its underground cinema through the life and films of one its most important participants, Robert Kramer (1939-1999). Whitney Strub is associate professor of History at Rutgers University–Newark. He is the author of Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right (Columbia University Press, 2011) and Obscenity Rules: Roth v. United States and the Long Struggle over Sexual Expression (University Press of Kansas, 2013), co-editor of ReFocus: The Films of Roberta Findlay (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), and editor of Queer Newark: Stories of Resistance, Love, and Community (Rutgers University Press, 2024) . His work has also appeared in Radical History Review, Journal of the History of Sexuality, The Nation, and Temple of Schlock , among other venues. He is a longtime member and former chair of North New Jersey Democratic Socialists of America. _____________________ We love to…

People in this episode

Hosts: Jason Christian, Anthony Ballas, Paul T. Klein

Guest: Whitney Strub

Topics covered

• radical cinema
• New Left
• Robert Kramer
• Whitney Strub
• film scholarship
• book recommendations

Keywords

• Robert Kramer
• radical cinema
• Whitney Strub
• New Left
• film history
• book recommendations

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Chicago Press

Books & works: Films That Explode Like Grenades: Robert Kramer and the Search for a Radical Cinema, Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right, Obscenity Rules: Roth v. United States and the Long Struggle over Sexual Expression, ReFocus: The Films of Roberta Findlay, Queer Newark: Stories of Resistance, Love, and Community, Anyone But My Husband, Baltimore's Black Arts Then & Now: Behind the Scenes of a Collaborative Public Humanities Project

More episodes of Cold War Cinema

• S2 Ep. 14: Fail Safe (1964, Sidney Lumet) · June 24, 2026 · 1h 42m

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Cold War Cinema podcast page.