A deep dive into the new era of digital content production and distribution In the twenty-first century, the platforms that both create and host content have become nearly as important as media itself. Companies such as Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube have attained a massive hold on the public imagination and have become an almost ineluctable part of people’s everyday lives. While the workings of media distribution had until very recently remained inconsequential to the average consumer, the recent popularization of various online platforms has made the question of distribution immediate to everyone. Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines provides a timely examination of the multifaceted distribution landscape in a moment of transformation and conceptualizes media distribution as a complex site of power, privilege, and gatekeeping. These tensions have local, national, and global consequences on the autonomy of creative workers, as well as on how we gain access to, engage with, and understand cultural products. Drawing on original research into distribution practices in industries as diverse as television, film, videogames, literature, and adult entertainment, each chapter explores how digitization has changed media distribution and its broader economic, industrial, social, and cultural implications. Bringing together experts from around the world and across the media industries, Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines presents a vast array of critical approaches and illustrative case studies for understanding the factors that have an impact on the way media travels and moves throughout our digital lives.

In 1884, twenty-three-year-old Corabelle Fellows left her family in Washington, DC, and journeyed out West to teach Native children in Nebraska and Dakota Territory. She hoped her missionary work would improve the lives of the Dakota and Lakota Sioux people by helping them assimilate into white culture, following the predominant government policy at the time. But after years of living among the Native people, it was Cora's perceptions of life, love, and faith that were transformed. It began with her friendship with Elizabeth Winyan, a remarkable Dakota woman who was a model of strength, compassion, and adaptability among her people. Winyan became a maternal figure for Cora in the strange land so far from the "civilized" city. She even saved Cora from being married against her will. Then Cora met Sam Campbell, a man from Scottish and Sioux stock. They fell in love and were married, though the match made national headlines after Cora's family disowned her. The couple struggled to find a place in the American frontier, straddling two worlds. For years their marriage was grist for the yellow press, and they became a sensational national story that led them to a brief stint as a sideshow attraction for traveling exhibitions and dime museums to support themselves. They would never live happily ever after, and the couple was plagued by racist rhetoric and sexist slander even after their divorce. Life Painted Red details Cora's experiences from her Washington, DC, exodus to her years living among the Sioux, and her scandalous, short-lived marriage to Sam Campbell.

Through an array of detailed case studies, this book explores the vibrant digital expressions of diverse groups of Muslim cybernauts: religious clerics and Sufis, feminists and fashionistas, artists and activists, hajj pilgrims and social media influencers. These stories span a vast cultural and geographic landscape—from Indonesia, Iran, and the Arab Middle East to North America. These granular case studies contextualize cyber Islam within broader social trends: racism and Islamophobia, gender dynamics, celebrity culture, identity politics, and the shifting terrain of contemporary religious piety and practice. The book’s authors examine an expansive range of digital multimedia technologies as primary “texts.” These include websites, podcasts, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube channels, online magazines and discussion forums, and religious apps. The contributors also draw on a range of methodological and theoretical models from multiple academic disciplines, including communication and media studies, anthropology, history, global studies, religious studies, and Islamic studies.

This Open Access book provides a new understanding of the meanings and motivations behind the wearing of beards, moustaches and whiskers, and their associated practices and practitioners. Concerning Beards offers an important new long-term perspective on health and the male body in British society. It argues that the male face has long been an important site for the articulation of bodily health and vigour, as well as masculinity. Through an exploration of the history of male facial hair in England, Alun Withey underscores its complex meanings, medical implications and socio-cultural significance from the mid-17th to the early 20th century. Herein, he charts the gradual shift in concepts of facial hair and shaving - away from ‘formal’ medicine and practice - towards new concepts of hygiene and personal grooming. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Wellcome Trust. This book is part of the Facialities series, which explores the social, cultural and political significance of the face in human history.

Exploring sacred mountains around the world, this book examines whether bonding and reverence to a mountain is intrinsic to the mountain, constructed by people, or a mutual encounter. Chapters explore mountains in England, Scotland, Wales, Italy, Ireland, the Himalaya, Japan, Greece, USA, Asia and South America, and embrace the union of sky, landscape and people to examine the religious dynamics between human and non-human entities. This book takes as its starting point the fact that mountains physically mediate between land and sky and act as metaphors for bridges from one realm to another, recognising that mountains are relational and that landscapes form personal and group cosmologies. The book fuses ideas of space, place and material religion with cultural environmentalism and takes an interconnected approach to material religio-landscapes. In this way it fills the gap between lived religious traditions, personal reflection, phenomenology, historical context, environmental philosophy, myths and performativity. In defining material religion as active engagement with mountain-forming and humanshaping landscapes, the research and ideas presented here provide theories that are widely applicable to other forms of material religion.

'Read any history of the Nineties in Britain and you will read about Britpop, Blair, the birth of the Premier League and the rise of new lads. I played no part in any of these events. Growing up in a tiny rural village on Dartmoor, no bands came within 100 miles, all the local farmers voted Tory, our nearest football team was in the fourth division, and the closest I got to being a new lad was when my older brother let me drink some of his Hooch.' In Watching the Nineties, much-loved comedian Josh Widdicombe tells the story of a strange rural childhood, the kind of childhood he only realised was weird when he left home and started telling people about it. From only having four people in his year at school, to living in a family home where they didn't just not bother locking the front door, they didn't even have a key. Using a different television show of the time as it's starting point for each chapter Watching the Nineties is part-childhood memoir, part-comic history of 90s television and culture. It will discuss everything from the dangers of recreating Gladiators in your front room, to Josh's belief that Mr Blobby is one of the great comic characters, to being the only vegetarian child west of Bristol. Together it tells the story of the end of an era, the last time when watching television was a shared experience for the family and the nation, before the internet meant everyone watched different things at different times on different devices, headphones on to make absolutely sure no one could watch it with them.

There are many cultural myths about serial killers, often propagated even by mental health professionals. Many assume there is a profile of a serial killer, that serial killers always go for the same victim type or always use the same MO, that they are more clever than ordinary people, and that they are inevitably charming and attractive. The truth is not as simple as that. There are different types of serial killers, and while there are many books that discuss the serial killer phenomenon especially in relationship to victim types or context, researchers have not yet been able to come up with a definition, or type, that covers the broad spectrum of serial killers and their complex psychological dynamics. Ramsland looks at the variety of serial killer types, illustrating that it is difficult to accurately depict these elusive, intriguing, and dangerous killers. There are many cultural myths about serial killers, often propagated even by mental health professionals. Many assume there is a profile of a serial killer, that serial killers always go for the same victim type or always use the same MO, that they are more clever than ordinary people, and that they are inevitably charming and attractive. The truth is not as simple as that. There are different types of serial killers and while there are many books that discuss the serial killer phenomenon especially in relationship to victim types or context, researchers have not yet been able to come up with a definition, or type, that covers the broad spectrum of serial killers and their complex psychological dynamics. Ramsland looks at serial killer types, illustrating that it is difficult to accurately depict these elusive, intriguing, and dangerous killers. This book examines a variety of serial killers, from sexual predators to psychotic killers, from murder teams to odd eccentric stalkers, in order to present the distinct psychological dynamics that set serial killers apart from other violent murderers. Among the motives addressed are lust, control, glory, profit, thrill, delusions, rage, the desire for company, the need to please a partner, and even murder as an intellectual exercise. Serial killers live double lives, hiding their violence even from those who live with them, so along with a study of motives are chapters devoted to how close associates have described killers, including parents, siblings, co-workers, lovers, and survivors. There is no profile of a serial killer, and this book establishes that in vivid and frightening detail.

New urban forms characterizing contemporary metropolises reflect a certain continuity with the patterns of the past. They also include unexpected forms of settlement and design that have emerged in response to social and economic needs and as a way of leveraging new technologies. Politics of the Periphery sets out to explore sub/urban governance in diverse contexts in order to better understand how materiality and space are shaped by the possibilities and constraints of confronting actors. This collection, edited by Pierre Hamel, examines the empirical aspects of collective action and planning in eight urban regions around the world – across North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa – and reveals the impacts and consequences of various structures of suburban governance. The case studies feature a diverse range of local actors facing both the specificity of their respective milieus and the broader context of extended urbanization as metropolitan regions cope with new territorial challenges. The book focuses on suburbanization processes that characterize most of these post-metropolitan regions and questions whether it is possible to improve suburban governance in the face of growing uncertainties arising from structural and subjective transformations. Paying close attention to the relationship between the local and the global, Politics of the Periphery challenges the planning processes of evolving metropolitan regions.

If countless books and movies are to be believed, America's Wild West was, at heart, a world of cowboys and Indians, sheriffs and gunslingers, scruffy settlers and mountain men—a man's world. Here, Chris Enss, in the latest of her popular books to take on this stereotype, tells the stories of twelve courageous women who faced down schoolrooms full of children on the open prairies and in the mining towns of the Old West. Between 1847 and 1858, more than 600 women teachers traveled across the untamed frontier to provide youngsters with an education, and the numbers grew rapidly in the decades to come, as women took advantage of one of the few career opportunities for respectable work for ladies of the era. Enduring hardship, the dozen women whose stories are movingly told in the pages of Frontier Teachers demonstrated the utmost dedication and sacrifice necessary to bring formal education to the Wild West. As immortalized in works of art and literature, for many students their women teachers were heroic figures who introduced them to a world of possibilities—and changed America forever.

Established by New York stockbroker Juan Trippe in 1927, the story of Pan Am is the story of US-led globalisation and imperial expansion in the twentieth century, with the airline achieving the vast majority of ‘firsts’ in aviation history, pioneering transoceanic travel and new technologies, and all but creating the glitz, style and ambience eulogised in Frank Sinatra’s ‘Come Fly with Me’. Bryce Evans investigates an aspect of the airline service that was central to the company’s success, its food; a gourmet glamour underpinned by both serious science and attention to the detail of fine dining culture. Modelled on the elite dining experience of the great ocean liners, the first transatlantic and transpacific flights featured formal thirteen course dinners served in art deco cabins and served by waiters in white waist-length jackets and garrison hats. As flight times got faster and altitudes higher, Pan Am pioneered the design of hot food galleys and commissioned research into how altitude and pressure affected taste buds, amending menus accordingly. A tale of collaboration with chefs from the best Parisian restaurants and the wining and dining of politicians and film stars, the book also documents what food service was like for flight attendants, exploring how the golden age of airline dining was underpinned by a racist and sexist culture. Written accessibly and with an eye for the glamour and razzamatazz of public aviation history, Bryce Evans' research into Pan Am airways will be valuable for scholars of food studies and aviation, consumer, tourism, transport and 20th century American history.

In Sicilian genealogy, a generation by generation lineage to the Late Middle Ages isn't unusual. This long-awaited, definitive guide shows you how to do it. Sicily boasts the world's best genealogical records, revealing the deep roots of a Sicilian identity and facilitating the construction of many pedigrees into the fifteenth century. Based on the author's 30 years of experience as a foremost expert in the field, this is the first complete guide ever published in English dedicated exclusively to Sicilian genealogical research. Its publication in 2013 established a new subject category in the Dewey catalogue, and it is the reference book consulted by professional genealogists researching Sicilian families. Topics range from parochial, civil and feudal records to DNA haplotyping, religion, rural life, cuisine, ethnography, coats of arms, surname origins and Jewish genealogy, with insightful, accurate information on historiography and research strategies - a few published here for the first time. With scientific rigor and disarming candor, "the Indiana Jones of Italian history" shows you how to "push the envelope" of your family history research into Sicily's multicultural medieval era. Family history is more than names, dates and pedigrees; it is the people and culture behind the names. Social context is not overlooked. If there were ever a handbook on Sicilian ethnology, this would be it. This book covers a wide range of topics in detail, transcending conventional strategies to explain the "how and why" of historical research: shortcuts and methods as well as advice on pitfalls to avoid. As a serious guide for dedicated researchers, it presumes some familiarity with basic genealogy, recommending introductory books to complement what one reads in this one, so don't expect photographs of vital statistics records and other documents. But even for family historians at the beginning of their research, this book is an excellent consultative reference. It brings to life an arcane, often elusive, field. Significantly, the author destroys a few myths about Italian family history, and about Italy itself, while describing real social history. Especially impressive is his refreshingly distinctive writing style, with blunt reality checks sprinkled throughout the lengthier chapters. That's the kind of pragmatism missing from many genealogical guides. While the chapters on the aristocracy and heraldry may interest fewer readers than those on simple lineal research, they are useful because most pedigrees before 1400 focus on the nobility. By his own admission, Mendola's tone is at times sardonic, as if this elder statesman were scolding the field's less disciplined historians while setting the stage for its beginners. Just when you think that his treatment of a particular topic has become tiresome or excessively dry and theoretical, he inserts a concrete example to make his point. It's an effective technique. In his assaults on the machinations of historical revisionists and genealogical fabulists, along with fake royalty and others who manipulate history for their own edification, the author takes no prisoners. Like Verres, the Roman governor of Sicily who fled into voluntary exile following Cicero's opening speech at his trial for corruption, genealogy's fantasists should flee the moment Lou Mendola enters the fray. In fact, quite a few have, as the author has been consulted over the years by journalists, law-enforcement authorities and others seeking to expose genealogy's identity tricksters. His role is not unlike that of a lone sheriff protecting a town or, for European traditionalists, the last knight defending a castle. He is one of Italy's most cosmopolitan historians, consulted by The History Channel, the Vatican, the Order of Malta, the Almanach de Gotha and the BBC. This is a reference work written by a highly knowledgeable, freethinking scholar, albeit one with close connections to Europe's traditionalist Establishment. The comparison to Indiana Jones, or even Rambo (!), is not inappropriate, except perhaps for Mendola's blue eyes. If you're a researcher, consulting this useful reference is like having an experienced, heavily-armed warrior escort you through jungles and mine fields to find The Truth on the other side. Not to worry. You'll get there. And when you do, your ancestors will be waiting to meet you.

This book examines how the profound religious, political, and intellectual shifts that characterize the early modern period in Europe are inextricably linked to cultural uses of alcohol in Europe and the Atlantic world. Combining recent work on the history of drink with innovative new research, the eight contributing scholars explore themes such as identity, consumerism, gender, politics, colonialism, religion, state-building, and more through the revealing lens of the pervasive drinking cultures of early modern peoples. Alcohol had a place at nearly every European table and a role in much of early modern experience, from building personal bonds via social and ritual drinking to fueling economies at both micro and macro levels. At the same time, drinking was also at the root of a host of personal tragedies, including domestic violence in the home and human trafficking across the Atlantic. Alcohol in the Early Modern World provides a fascinating re-examination of pre-modern beliefs about and experiences with intoxicating beverages.

This is the first anthology of fashion criticism, a growing field that has been too long overlooked. Fashion Criticism aims to redress the balance, claiming a place for writing on fashion alongside other more well-established areas of criticism. Exploring the history of fashion criticism in the English language, this essential work takes readers from the writing published in avant-garde modernist magazines at the beginning of the twentieth century to the fashion criticism of Robin Givhan—the first fashion critic to win a Pulitzer Prize—and of Judith Thurman, a National Book Award winner. It covers the shift in newspapers from the so-called “women’s pages” to the contemporary style sections, while unearthing the work of cultural critics and writers on fashion including Susan Sontag and Eve Babitz (Vogue), Bebe Moore Campbell (Ebony), Angela Carter (New Statesman) and Hilton Als (New Yorker). Examining the gender dynamics of the field and its historical association with the feminine, Fashion Criticism demonstrates how fashion has gained ground as a subject of critical analysis, capitalizing on the centrality of dress and clothing in an increasingly visual and digital world. The book argues that fashion criticism occupied a central role in negotiating shifting gender roles as well as shifting understandings of race. Bringing together two centuries of previously uncollected articles and writings, from Oscar Wilde’s editorials in The Woman’s World to the ground-breaking fashion journalism of the 1980s and today’s proliferation of fashion bloggers, it will be an essential resource for students of fashion studies, media and journalism.