Showing how Americans have massively turned to a self-help empowerment model to manage chronic feelings of insecurity, Anxiety in Middle-Class America explains why no group has ever been as anxious about anxiety and interested in tackling it as a moral and personal problem. Anxiety is the focus of increasing preoccupation and intervention in middle-class America and the late modern world. It is reportedly the most common mental illness in the United States, affecting almost a quarter of its adult population every year. Views diverge on what this means. This work is for readers who are intrigued by the exponential rise in reported rates of anxiety across the lifespan and by all the talk about anxiety, dissatisfied with non-sociological and symptom-based accounts of mental health, and open-minded enough to consider the self-help phenomenon as more than an oppressive craze driven by capitalist industry, neoliberal ideology, complicit publishers, formulaic writers, and irreflexive consumers. In providing a sociologically informed account of some of the most widespread emotional troubles of late modern life and the unique historical pressures that promote them, this work will be of interest to researchers in a broad range of fields, from sociology, anthropology, and mind/body/society studies, to cultural history, communications, and social philosophy. It will also interest mental health professionals and cultural critics.

The book reflects on the role of the creative economies in a range of African countries (namely Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda). Chapters explore how creative economies emerge and can be supported in African countries. The contributors focus on two key dimensions: the role of higher education and the role of policy. Firstly, they consider the role of higher education and alternative forms of specialised education to reflect on how the creative aspirations of students (and future creative workers) of these countries are met and developed. Secondly, they explore the role of policy in supporting the agendas of the creative economy, taking also into consideration the potential historical dimension of policy interventions and the impact of a lack of policy frameworks. The book concludes by reflecting on how these two pillars of creative economy development, which are usually taken for granted in studying creative economies in the global north, need to be understood with their own specificity in the context of our selected case studies in Africa. This book will be of interest to students, scholars and professionals researching the creative economies in Africa across the humanities and social sciences. All the royalties from the publication of this book will be donated to the not-for-profit organisation The Craft and Design Institute (CDI) (https://www.thecdi.org.za/) in South Africa, supporting capacity building for young creative practitioners from disadvantaged backgrounds.

This book comprehensively describes the impact of modern technologies on political leadership by providing a new paradigm of the phenomenon of neo-leadership, that is political leadership oriented on creating both the image and political influence on the Internet. It examines its functioning in the new media environment and identifies the most important transforming trends, taking into account their impact on political and social relations in an era of dynamic technological development. Systematically exploring various dimensions of leadership, it presents new notions relevant in a networked world where leaders are created and conduct themselves against the backdrop of a technological revolution, including the development of AI, automation, algorithms and ultrafast networks, all of which strengthen or disrupt their impact and create a new set of virtual authorities exerting an increasing impact on society, ethical considerations and political life and requiring new methods for study. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of leadership and elite studies, media and communication studies, political marketing, political science, international relations; public policy, and sociology.

Infertility Comics and Graphic Medicine examines women's graphic memoirs on infertility, foregrounding the complex interrelationship between women's life writing, infertility studies, and graphic medicine. Through a scholarly examination of the artists' use of visual-verbal codes of the comics medium in narrating their physical ordeals and affective challenges occasioned by infertility, the book seeks to foreground the intricacies of gender identity, embodiment, subjectivity, and illness experience. Providing long-overdue scholarly attention on the perspectives of autobiographical and comics studies, the authors examine the gendered nature of the infertility experience and the notion of motherhood as an ideological force which interpolates socio-cultural discourses, accentuating the potential of graphic medicine as a creative space for the infertile women to voice their hitherto silenced perspectives on childlessness with force and urgency. This interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to scholars and students in comics studies, the health humanities, literature, and women's and gender studies, and will also be suitable for readers in visual studies and narrative medicine.

This edited collection explores how the relationship between comic art and feminism has been shaped by global, transnational, and local trends, curating analyses of multinational comic art that encompass themes of gender, sexuality, power, vulnerability, assault, abuse, taboo, and trauma. The chapters illuminate in turn the defining features of the aesthetics, materiality, and thematic content of their source material - often expressed with humorous undertones of self-reflection or social criticism - as well as recurring strategies of visualising and narrating female experiences. Broadening the research perspective of feminist comics to include national comics cultures peripheral to the cultural centers of Anglo-American, Franco-Belgian, and Japanese comics, the anthology explores how the dominant narrative or history of canonical works can be challenged or deconstructed by local histories of comics and feminism and their transnational connections, and how local histories complement or challenge the current understanding of the relationship between feminism and comic art. This is an essential collection for scholars and students in comics studies, women and gender studies, media studies, and literature.

Bringing together critical race, queer and decolonial analytical approaches, visual analysis, and multimodal discourse analysis, this book explores the discursive strategies deployed by African luxury brands in an age of cross-platform, intertextual branding. Building on literature examining the aesthetics and politics of African luxury, this book demonstrates how leading African luxury brands create visual material speaking to complex sensibilities of culture, nature, and future. Iqani shows how powerful brand narratives and strategies reveal ethical and ideological messages that function to re-position Africa in an increasingly congested global marketplace of ideas. In acknowledging that there is a strong political validity to recognizing the importance of African brands staking their claim in luxury, this book also problematizes the role these brands play in the promotion of luxury discourses, advancing the project of capitalism and their contribution to broader patterns of inequality. Shedding new light not only on luxury branding strategies but also on the idea of a luxurious global "Africanicity" and on the complex cultural politics of South Africa, African Luxury Branding will be of interest to advanced students and researchers in disciplines, including Critical Advertising Studies, African Studies, Media and Communications.

- Delivers a unique and original perspective that explores how students navigate elite universities by focussing on their race and class backgrounds. - It provides an original, comparative account of how students are positioned as graduates in elite universities. It will specifically highlight how students' prior experiences have had a significant impact on their experiences at elite universities. - By using Bourdieu and CRT, the book will provide a unique theoretical perspective on how inequalities are reproduced and perpetuated for some groups and not others.

This book identifies and examines three years of Beyonce's career as a pop mega star using critical race, feminist, and performance studies methodologies. This book explores how the careful choreography of Beyonce's image, voice, and public persona, coupled with her intelligent use of audio and visual mediums, makes her one of the most influential entertainers of the 21st century. Keleta-Mae proposes that 2013 to 2016 was a pivotal period in Beyonce's career and looks at three artistic projects that she created during that time: her self-titled debut visual album Beyonce, her video and live performance of 'Formation', and her second visual album Lemonade. By examining the progression of Beyonce's career during this period, and the impact it had politically, culturally, and socially, the author demonstrates how Beyonce brought 21st Century feminism into the mainstream through layered explorations of female blackness. Ideal for scholars and students of performance in the social and political spheres, and of course fans of Beyonce herself, this book examines the mega superstar's transition into a creator of art that engages with Black culture and Black life with increased thoughtfulness.

Political Pathologies from The Sopranos to Succession argues that highly praised prestige TV shows reveal the underlying fantasies and contradictions of upper-middle class political centrists. Through a psychoanalytic interpretation of The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire, House of Cards, Dexter, Game of Thrones, and Succession, Robert Samuels reveals how moderate "liberals" have helped to produce and maintain the libertarian Right. Samuels' analysis explores the difference between contemporary centrists and the foundations of liberal democracy, exposing the myth of the "liberal media" and considers the consequences of these celebrated series, including the undermining of trust in modern liberal democratic institutions. Political Pathologies from The Sopranos to Succession contributes to a greater understanding of the ways media and political ideology can circulate on a global level through the psychopathology of class consciousness. This book will be of great interest to academics and scholars considering intersections of psychoanalytic studies, television studies and politics.

1) This book offers a comprehensive understanding of Amrita Pritam's work. 2) It includes representative selections from her creative writings; her life and times in English translations; her nonfictional writings and also demonstrate her editing acumen as editor for over thirty years. 3) This book will be of interest to departments of South Asian Literature and Cultural studies across UK.

Examining a range of South Asian Anglophone diasporic fiction and poetry, this monograph opens a new dialogue between diaspora studies and gender studies. It shows how discourses of diaspora benefit from re-examining their own critical relation to concepts of the maternal and the motherland. Rather than considering maternity as a fixed or naturally given category, it challenges essentialist conceptions and explores mothering as a performative practice which actively produces discursive meaning. This innovative approach also involves an investigation of central metaphors in nationalist and diasporic rhetorics, bringing critical attention to the strategies they employ and the unique aesthetic forms they produce.

*The field of literary journalism studies is widely considered in need of a more global and integrative approach. This book provides just that, with contributions from a diverse range of established and emerging scholars and considerations of e.g. the many female and indigenous literary journalism authors. *Interdisciplinary topic by nature - will appeal to postgraduate students and researchers not only of Journalism Studies, but also Literature and Media Studies. *Entire sections dedicated to literary journalism's responses to war, immigration, and censorship which are continued contentious and very topical issues in the broader field of journalism studies.

This book Takes insights from screenwriting to revolutionize our understanding of exhibition curating. Focuses on how despite all genuine efforts to reach broader audiences, museums persistently fear to risk credibility by becoming 'too popular'. Explores the enormous potential to learn from other storytelling forms which are more experienced in the field of entertainment. Offers a comparative in-depth analysis of three classical Hollywood films and three cultural historical exhibitions demonstrates how dramatic suspense techniques can be applied to exhibitions. addresses academics and students in the fields of museum studies, gallery studies, and heritage studies interested in how exhibitions function and in how to achieve dramaturgical effects like suspense.

Disneyization of Drug Use offers an innovative, ground-up understanding of the atypical patterns of illegal drug use that often permeate multi-day party zones such as nightlife tourist resorts and music festivals. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted over three summers in Ibiza, the book contextualizes the drug and alcohol-related experiences of tourists and seasonal workers operating in the island's infamously hedonistic party spaces. Through an innovative application of Alan Bryman's (2004) seminal work, The Disneyization of Society, the book argues how the same marketing principles that generate consumption in the legal economy of Disney theme parks also drives illicit drug use in Ibiza and music festivals, where the line between legal and illegal substances rapidly blurs to the point of collapse. This highly innovative book offers rich insights into the complex interplay between drug and alcohol use, agency, pleasure, risk, consumerism, and social context. It will be of great appeal to academics and students interested in the fields of cultural criminology, deviant leisure, drug and alcohol studies, youth culture, and ethnographic research methods.

* The book will include high quality contributions from practitioners and researchers that consider the ethics and aesthetics of the work, investigating the role of sound in community building, wellbeing, education, and social or environmental justice. * Would be recommended reading in leading applied and socially engaged theatre courses, in sound studies and sonic art courses and in media and communication courses. * The closest competitors are more a broad survey of sound art while this book looks to the future, building possibilities, and imagining what might be through the creative acts of inquiry and sound. Contribution from Brandon LaBelle (key theorist in sound studies) First book to address community engaged arts through a sound studies lens An area of community engaged arts that has exploded recently since the COVID-19 pandemic

The tensions between utopian dreams and dystopian anxieties permeate science fiction as a genre, and nowhere is this tension more evident than in Star Trek. This book breaks new ground by exploring music and sound within the Star Trek franchise across decades and media, offering the first sustained look at the role of music in shaping this influential series. The chapters in this edited collection consider how the aural, visual, and narrative components of Star Trek combine as it constructs and deconstructs the utopian and dystopian, shedding new light on the series' political, cultural, and aesthetic impact. Considering how the music of Star Trek defines and interprets religion, ideology, artificial intelligence, and more, while also considering fan interactions with the show's audio, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of music, media studies, science fiction, and popular culture.

The tensions between utopian dreams and dystopian anxieties permeate science fiction as a genre, and nowhere is this tension more evident than in Star Trek. This book breaks new ground by exploring music and sound within the Star Trek franchise across decades and media, offering the first sustained look at the role of music in shaping this influential series. The chapters in this edited collection consider how the aural, visual, and narrative components of Star Trek combine as it constructs and deconstructs the utopian and dystopian, shedding new light on the series' political, cultural, and aesthetic impact. Considering how the music of Star Trek defines and interprets religion, ideology, artificial intelligence, and more, while also considering fan interactions with the show's audio, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of music, media studies, science fiction, and popular culture.

Owen Kelly wrote one of the seminal books on cultural democracy in the 80s and returns now with a fresh take on a concept that has re-emerged with growing urgency in the last decade. This new book brings a unique, in depth philosophical take on the concepts and principles of cultural democracy, written by one of the key thinkers in the field. Cultural democracy is a subject taught on many Arts Management programmes and this book will be valuable reading for students in that it brings these issues and questions up to date and provides a framework for thinking through the conflicting ideologies in cultural policies and practices. The writing style is clear and direct, ideal for students and practitioners. Although it deals with often complex ideas, it does so without jargon and without assuming much prior knowledge of the term.

A necessary examination of temporality, ethics, and trauma in Israeli film and television since the turn of the millennium. Original analysis of contemporary issues in Israeli media and culture, using feminist theory, queer theory, as well as critical race and postcolonial studies. Clear and nuanced analysis that will be helpful for those interested in trauma and memory studis, postcolonial studies, gende and sexuality studies, Jewish studies, Middle Eastern studies, and cultural studies.

WHY PUBLISH: - Challenges familiar assumptions about investigative journalism, and the field's relatives status in the fast-chaning news industry today. - Includes topical content, such as the role investigative journalism has performed in Australia's mediated Indigenous settler-relations. - Contains interviews with key industry and research professionals, including award winning journalist who is the editor of Brisbane Times, Danielle Cronin.

This volume is a collection of ten essays that direct their gaze to the unfolding of contagions in the non-classical contexts of Asia and Africa. Or, to borrow from the title of one of Partha Chatterjee's books, they are reflections on the pandemic in most of the world. Featuring many scholars (of the humanities and social sciences) in the Global South, these chapters take as their intellectual focus the political-social as well as the ethical challenges posed by the contagions in the "East." Through analyses of literary narratives/films/video games, this Contagion Narratives traces the manufactured narratives of victimization by majority-communities and the lethal divides consequently being drawn between a reconstituted "authentic majority" and the more vulnerable minority 'other' in these societies. The essays in this collection are animated by imaginations of liveable alternatives on a planet on the brink. This volume traces lineages to Buchi Emecheta and Rabindranath Tagore rather than Albert Camus, to Satyajit Ray and the indie traditions rather than Hollywood, and to Buddhism rather than Christianity, to track the historic journeys of "modernity." Using an eclectic set of analytical tools and strategies of textual criticism, this volume argues that ideas of "democracy," even while they carry echoes of other societies, are markedly different as they travel from Gaddafi's Libya to Wuhan under lockdown to colonial Bengal.

- international insights and recommendations around topics of gender and diversity in higher education linking to larger societal goals of improving equality. - Incorporating innovative processes and methods, the researchers address how the experiences of groups who have been subordinated and marginalized can be heard, proposing a re-imagination of empowerment and leadership within higher education and best practices for the benefit of ongoing higher education development.

This book: sheds light on the intersectionality of lived experiences, including gender, sexuality, family, (mental) health, race and ethnicity, migration, and nationality, offering a picture of a community whose experience is deeply embedded in the dynamic society around. takes an innovative approach in viewing the community as an integral part of the world in flux, rather than an isolated monoracial and monolingual tightly-knit entity. is ideal for students and scholars of Gender Studies, LGBTQ Studies, Sociology, Health, and Asian Studies.

Videogames and Agency explores the trend in videogames and their marketing to offer a player higher volumes, or even more distinct kinds, of player freedom. The book offers a new conceptual framework that helps us understand how this freedom to act is discussed by designers, and how that in turn reflects in their design principles. What can we learn from existing theories around agency? How do paratextual materials reflect design intention with regards to what the player can and cannot do in a videogame? How does game design shape the possibility space for player action? Through these questions and selected case studies that include AAA and independent games alike, the book presents a unique approach to studying agency that combines game design, game studies, and game developer discourse. By doing so, the book examines what discourses around player action, as well as a game's design can reveal about the nature of agency and videogame aesthetics. This book will appeal to readers specifically interested in videogames, such as game studies scholars or game designers, but also to media studies students and media and screen studies scholars less familiar with digital games.

This volume offers a unique exploration of how ageing masculinities are represented in contemporary international cinema With chapters spanning a range of national cinemas, the primarily European focus of the book is juxtaposed with analysis of the social and cultural constructions of manhood and the 'anti-ageing' impulses of male stardom in contemporary Hollywood These themes are inflected in different ways throughout the volume, from considering how old age is not the monolithic and unified life stage it is often framed as, to exploring issues of queerness, sexuality, and asexuality, as well as themes such as national cinema and dementia Offering a diverse and multifaceted portrait of ageing and masculinity in contemporary cinema, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of film and screen studies, gender and masculinity studies, and cultural gerontology about a variety of national cinemas