Breathing life into a Milton for the Twenty-first century, this cutting-edge collection shows students and scholars alike how Milton transforms and is transformed by popular literature and polemics, film and television, and other modern media.

Law and Popular Culture contains a collection of essays which explore the ways in which law interacts with and is represented in popular culture. In common with earlier volumes in the Current Legal Issues series, it seeks both a theoretical and methodological focus. This volume covers a broad range of issues. It is divided into nine parts which cover introductory themes; law as represented in the cinema and television; law as represented in novels; law and music; popular representations of crime and punishment; law, sexuality and popular culture; human rights and popular culture; the cultural phenomena of the mall and the franchise; and lawyering in popular culture.

This edited volume of essays analyzes how the entire practice of journalism in America has changed irrevocably due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Written by journalists and other industry professionals, essays outline an assortment of related topics, including the rapid adoption of new technology like Zoom, the state of public health reporting, diversity in journalism and more. This book also outlines major implications for the future of journalism, detailing some long-lasting changes that could impact generations to come. These shifts in journalism will have economic, social and ethical consequences long after the pandemic ends and could shift the entire paradigm for deciding what news is and how it is covered.

As demonstrated by the 2016 presidential election, memes have become the suasory tactic par excellence for the promotional and recruitment efforts of the Alt-right. Memes are not simply humorous shorthands or pithy assertions, but play a significant role in the machinations of politics and how the public comes to understand and respond to their government and compatriots. Using the tools of rhetorical criticism, the authors detail how memetic persuasion operates, with a particular focus on the 2016 election of Donald J. Trump. Make America Meme Again reveals the rhetorical principles used to design Alt-right memes, outlining the myriad ways memes lure mainstream audiences to a number of extremist claims. In particular, this book argues that Alt-right memes impact the culture of digital boards and broader public culture by stultifying discourse, thereby shaping how publics congeal. The authors demonstrate that memes are a mechanism that proliferate white nationalism and exclusionary politics by spreading algorithmically through network cultures in ways that are often difficult to discern. Alt-right memes thus present a significant threat to democratic praxis, one that can begin to be combatted through a rigorous rhetorical analysis of their power and influence. Make America Meme Again illuminates the function of networked persuasion for scholars and practitioners of rhetoric, media, and communication; political theorists; digital humanists; and anyone who has ever seen, crafted, or proliferated a meme.

This booka (TM)s chapters analyze aspects of urban politics with a combination of critical thinking (influenced by Walter Benjamin, Jacques Ranciere, Henri Lefebvre, and Achille Mbembe, among others) and readings of artistic genres (film, literature, and architecture). The coverage of cities includes, Tokyo, Paris, New York, Nairobi, Boston, Berlin and Hong Kong.

These revised editions of four classic texts each include a new introduction by Henry Jenkins, explaining 'Why Fiske Still Matters' for today's students, followed by a discussion chapter between former Fiske students. This new material underlines the continuing relevance of these foundational texts in the study of communication, contemporary media and popular culture. The John Fiske Collection includes re-issues of the following four classic texts: Introduction to Communication Studies Television Culture Reading the Popular Understanding Popular Culture This collection will be highly useful to undergraduate and postgraduate students on all communication, media and cultural studies courses.

This is the first book to explore the phenomenon of glamour and celebrity in contemporary Russian culture, ranging across media forms, disciplinary boundaries and modes of inquiry, with particular emphasis on the media personality. The book demonstrates how the process of 'celebrification' in Russia coincides with the dizzying pace of social change and economic transformation, the latter enabling an unprecedented fascination with glamour and its requisite extravagance; how in the 1990s and 2000s, celebrities - such as film or television stars - moved away from their home medium to become celebrities straddling various media; and how celebrity is a symbol manipulated by the dominant culture and embraced by the masses. It examines the primacy of the visual in celebrity construction and its dominance over the verbal, alongside the interdisciplinary, cross-media, post-Soviet landscape of today's fame culture. Taking into account both general tendencies and individual celebrities, including pop-diva Alla Pugacheva and ex-President and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the book analyses the internal dynamics of the institutions involved in the production, marketing, and maintenance of celebrities, as well as the larger cultural context and the imperatives that drive Russian society's romance with glamour and celebrity.

Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner have been partners in life and work for more than forty years. Over those years they have been comedic pioneers in television, sound recording, film, theatre, and animation. They have won numerous prestigious awards and endeared themselves to generations of Americans. Although Lily Tomlin is the famous one-Ernestine ('Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?') and Edith Ann ('And that's the truth.') - her most meaningful work has been created in partnership with Jane Wagner. This book explores the ways they have used and expanded notions of queer to make their unique impact on American culture.

When this book was originally published it was the first work of its kind to examine the way in which language is used to express the 'myth' of advertising slogans and other popular cultural forms. By making use of general theories from the disciplines of anthropology, linguistics, media studies and semiotics, the book attempts to demystify Japanese culture as it has been hitherto presented in the West, and shows how such cultural forms as 'noodle westerns' and high-school baseball uphold the well-known ideologies of 'selflessness', 'diligence', 'compliance' and 'co-operation' typically associated with the Japanese. Ultimately, the book poses the question: are those whom we call the Japanese 'real' people in their own right, or merely a nation acting out a part written for them by Western civilisation?

The world is full of disparities where graying appears as a new social element. The demographic change, along with the differences in wealth and knowledge will greatly influence the future. Globalization will be faster and the knowledge network stronger.

The slender family and the empty home will see growth of new human emotions, which will break away from the confines of biological compulsions. Remaining in touch with the planetary network will be the way of the future man. Working for the network will be his purpose of life. "The Aging World" is an exploration of the developing challenge.

The future will not happen, it will have to be created in the close world. The billion strong elderly will have to join the mainstream economy, as the age-integrated society will not afford their leisure.

Prof. Ranjit Kumar Chandra, the noted immunologist writes: " Humans are complex organisms; their evolution is a result of complex interactions of genes and environment. Bagchi has attempted the almost impossible task of looking at the interplay of history, demography, macroeconomics and sociology and its impact on the aging of world populations. His analyses appear convincing. It will be interesting to watch how his predictions will unfold in reality."

This superbly researched study offers a chalk-face perspective on the secret of Finland's educational success. Providing an intimate and revealing portrait of the Nordic nation's schools and its teacher training system, it sets out to explain why Finland's students consistently rank top, with low variance and moderate inputs, among OECD countries across the range of criteria, from reading to mathematics. Alongside the detailed analysis culled from many hours of interviews with teachers and principals and dozens of visits to school throughout the country, the author maps the educational landscape of Finland: the sector's history, culture and development, its guiding principles, methodologies, and learning environments. The result is a cogent assessment of how and why Finland is universally regarded as a high-grade educational exemplar. The volume provides the hundreds of researchers, teaching professionals, and policy makers who visit Finland in search of inspiration with essential background material on the country's magic educational ingredients, which include a highly motivated cohort of well-trained teachers, a recognition of the vital importance of early years education and nurture, functional and inviting learning environments, and a rejection of pedagogical dogma in favour of developing methodologies that produce results at the same time as fostering students' confidence and collegiality. At the same age, Finland's schoolchildren have roughly one less year of formal schooling than most of their international counterparts, do not consider themselves to be overworked, and rank alongside hot-housed Singaporean or South Korean youngsters in international assessments of achievement. They are the educational equivalent of world-beating sports stars who make success appear effortless. This volume lifts the lid on the hard work and careful planning that underpin their achievements.

Masculinity and Irish Popular Culture is an interdisciplinary collection of essays by established and emerging scholars, analysing the shifting representations of Irish men across a range of popular culture forms in the period of the Celtic Tiger and beyond. From the self-stylings of GAA star Paul Galvin to theatrical depictions of an Irish masculinity in crisis, the essays firmly situate these diverse images of Irish manhood within the social and cultural contexts that produced them. Taking as its overall context the social changes instigated by the economic boom of the 1990s, the book traces the effects of these changes into popular understandings of what it is to be an Irish male. Through insightful analyses of film, theatre, literature and more, the essays in this collection argue that Irish masculinity has become a more heterogeneous concept within this period while critiquing the gender binaries that continue to structure Irish society and culture.

Bilton's study of early 20th Century American Culture interprets the anarchic absurdity of slapstick movies as a form of collective anxiety dream, their fantastical images and illogical gags bypassing rational thought to express the unconscious fears, wishes and concerns of the modern age. Silent film comedy, with its childlike love of the illogical, the destructive and the anti-social, seems to suggest a form of comic revolt against the mechanisation and the uniformity of the machine age, but the book also charts how a new consumer culture sought simultaneously to tame and contain these energies, redirecting them in the service of a newly emergent mass culture. Not just a film history of the silent era, Bilton also provides a provocative and lively engagement with the origins of mass culture, tracing the origins of Hollywood's dream factory and alongside it the roots of our own irrational, childlike, celebrity-obsessed consumer culture.

A concise history of smoking in British popular culture from the early nineteenth century to the present day.. Provides the historical backdrop to the current debates about the politics of tobacco and health, demonstrating that both pro- and anti-smokers have consistently failed to understand the position of smoking within popular culture.. Important themes explored include: the importance of consumption to constructions of masculinity and femininity, the role of the state in the official regulation of the 'minor vices', the morality of consumption and the position of scientific knowledge within popular culture.. Traces the production, promotion and consumption of tobacco as well as outlining the arguments that have variously opposed this ever-controversial drug.. Genuinely interdisciplinary, combining elements of social, cultural and economic history whilst contributing to debates in sociology and cultural studies, the anthropology of material culture, design history, medical history and public health policy. -- .

In the contemporary fascination with images of crime, violence gets under our skin and keeps us enthralled. The Scene of Violence explores the spectator's encounter with the cinematic scene of violence - rape and revenge, homicide and serial killing, torture and terrorism. Providing a detailed reading of both classical and contemporary films - for example, Kill Bill, Blue Velvet, Reservoir Dogs, The Matrix, Psycho, The Accused, Elephant, Seven, Thelma & Louise, United 93, Zodiac, and No Country for Old Men - Alison Young returns the affective processes of the cinematic image to the study of law, crime and violence. Engaging with legal theory, cultural criminology and film studies, the book unfolds both our attachment to the authority of law and our identification with the illicit. Its original contribution is to bring together the cultural fascination of crime with a nuanced account of what it means to watch cinema. The Scene of Violence shows how the spectator is bound by the laws of film to the judgment of the crime-image.

What is the relationship between feminism and popular culture? Has there been a 'backlash' against feminism or is feminism now part of contemporary 'commonsense'? Can feminism learn from popular culture? Feminism in Popular Culture explores these questions through a diverse range of texts and sites - from news coverage, 'The Vagina Monologues', the Scream trilogy, 'Ally McBeal' and 'Sex and the City', sex documentaries and TV cooks, to breakdancing, beauty salons and computer game-playing. Feminism in Popular Culture does not assume that popular culture could benefit from a feminist 'makeover'. Rather, it analyses how different meanings of feminism have been negotiated within popular culture - how popular culture has made sense of feminism.

As America experiences the growing pains associated with the rapid social changes in the economy, technology, and culture, various groups must develop coping mechanisms to help them deal with the anxiety that is brought on by such changes. Generation Xers, on the cutting edge of these changes, are no exception. More so than any other group, elite Xers, those who are succeeding in the new economy, have adopted a unique personality style, chameleonism, as a defense mechanism. People with a chameleon personality pretend to be what others want them to be in an effort to obtain for themselves the kind of security Xers feel previous generations have enjoyed, but which may not be available to their own generation. Rosen further argues that this personality component, of pretending to be something one is not, becomes a permanent part of the personality when it is practiced and used frequently enough. This riveting examination of the Xer generation sheds new light on the survival mechanisms employed by those who feel threatened by social changes, even as they participate in and benefit from them.

The author begins by providing a careful explanation of the chameleon personality before delving into the special problems and obstacles (both real and perceived) that torment elite Xers, and their ways of dealing with these issues. He discusses various sources of anxiety and how the chameleon personality comes into play with regard to conflict between generations, conflict between the genders, and conflict brought on by immigration and foreign competition. While Rosen's approach is primarily socio-psychological, he also provides historical background on issues of social change and other attempts at dealing with it in the past. He presents a reasoned examination of the chameleon personality as it is manifested in America's Generation X in an effort to shed light on this unique segment of our population.

Reading Vampire Gothic Through Blood examines the manifestations of blood and vampires in various texts and contexts. It seeks to connect, through blood, fictional to real-life vampires to trace similarities, differences and discontinuities. These movements will be seen to parallel changing notions about embodiment and identity in culture.

Learn to draw expressive faces to communicate thoughts, feelings and emotions! Drawing characters with realistic facial expressions is a challenging and critical skill for every manga artist and storyteller. Drawing Manga Faces & Expressions is an invaluable practical guide for illustrators who wish to bring their drawing skills to the next level! This book contains over 175 detailed step-by-step lessons and 1,200 drawings, with practical advice and helpful tips on every page. The tutorials covered in this comprehensive guide include: How to draw realistically consistent faces from every possible angle How to draw attractive eyes, noses, mouths, ears and hairlines for any age or gender How to apply shading to make your characters' faces appear three-dimensional How to express emotions like joy, anger, fear, surprise, sadness, wonder, confusion and calm And so much more!

Ours is the age of celebrity. An inescapable aspect of daily life in our media-saturated societies of the twenty-first century, celebrity is celebrated for its infinite plasticity and glossy seductions. But there is also a darker side. Celebrity culture is littered from end to end with addictions, pathologies, neuroses, even suicides. Why, as a society, are we held in thrall to celebrity? What is the power of celebrity in a world of increasing consumerism, individualism and globalization? Routledge Handbook of Celebrity Studies, edited by acclaimed social theorist Anthony Elliott, offers a remarkably clear overview of the analysis of celebrity in the social sciences and humanities, and in so doing seeks to develop a new agenda for celebrity studies. The key theories of celebrity, ranging from classical sociological accounts to critical theory, and from media studies to postmodern approaches, are drawn together and critically appraised. There are substantive chapters looking at fame, renown and celebrity in terms of the media industries, pop music, the makeover industries, soap stars, fans and fandom as well as the rise of non-Western forms of celebrity. The Handbook also explores in detail the institutional aspects of celebrity, and especially new forms of mediated action and interaction. From Web 3.0 to social media, the culture of celebrity is fast redefining the public political sphere. Throughout this volume, there is a strong emphasis on interdisciplinarity with chapters covering sociology, cultural studies, psychology, politics and history. Written in a clear and direct style, this handbook will appeal to a wide undergraduate audience. The extensive references and sources will direct students to areas of further study.

Despite the explosion of scholarly interest in the "global 1968" phenomenon, the seminal influence of the arts - in both their popular and avant-garde iterations - has too often been neglected. Student activism in the space of the university and the street made up only a part of the broad anti-authoritarian eruption of 1968, and not even necessarily the most important one. Arguably more fundamental was a broad democratization of cultural production in which avant-garde artists and youthful appropriators alike played a leading role. Cultural forms such as art, "happenings," fashion, comics, movies, and music were critically important to the new youth sensibility and its dissemination within society more broadly. Popular music and visual culture were among the most important of these categories, opening up new vistas of emancipatory possibility and fueling the development of new stylistic codes. This wide-ranging, interdisciplinary collection brings together scholars in history, film and media studies, cultural studies, art history, music and other disciplines to consider the symbiosis of the sonic and the visual that so powerfully shaped sixties counterculture.

"Comics and the U.S. South" offers a wide-ranging and long overdue assessment of how life and culture in the United States South is represented in serial comics, graphic novels, newspaper comic strips, and webcomics. Diverting the lens of comics studies from the skyscrapers of Superman's Metropolis or Chris Ware's Chicago to the swamps, back roads, small towns, and cities of the U.S. South, this collection critically examines the pulp genres associated with mainstream comic books alongside independent and alternative comics. Some essays seek to discover what Captain America can reveal about southern regionalism and how slave narratives can help us reread "Swamp Thing"; others examine how creators such as Walt Kelly ("Pogo"), Howard Cruse ("Stuck Rubber Baby"), Kyle Baker ("Nat Turner"), and Josh Neufeld ("A.D.: New Orleans after the Deluge") draw upon the unique formal properties of the comics to question and revise familiar narratives of race, class, and sexuality; and another considers how southern writer Randall Kenan adapted elements of comics form to prose fiction. With essays from an interdisciplinary group of scholars, "Comics and the U.S. South" contributes to and also productively reorients the most significant and compelling conversations in both comics scholarship and in southern studies.

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"Brown argues convincingly that alien abduction stories speak to several key issues in our culture, from environmentalism to changing ideas about reproduction. Extending far beyond textual readings, she instead tells the stories of individual people, treating them with respect, but with a critical lens as well. Her analysis of the role of 'experts' in alien abduction-their power and the misuses of that power-is utterly compelling."
--Melani McAlister, George Washington University

aBrownas brilliant study is so much more than a book about alien abduction--it is a flesh-and-blood inquiry into the nature of belief in a technologically advanced society.a
--Andrew Ross, author of "Fast Boat to China"

Since its emergence in the 1960s, belief in alien abduction has saturated popular culture, with the ubiquitous image of the almond-eyed alien appearing on everything from bumper stickers to bars of soap. Drawing on interviews with alleged abductees from the New York area, Bridget Brown suggests a new way for people to think about the alien phenomenon, one that is concerned not with establishing whether aliens actually exist, but with understanding what belief in aliens in America may tell us about our changing understanding of ourselves and our place in the world.

They Know Us Better Than We Know Ourselves looks at how the belief in abduction by extraterrestrials is constituted by and through popular discourse and the images provided by print, film, and television. Brown contends that the abduction phenomenon is symptomatic of a period during which people have come to feel increasingly divested of the ability to know whatis real or true about themselves and the world in which they live. The alien abduction phenomenon helps us think about how people who feel left out create their own stories and fashion truths that square with their own experience of the world.

Pop music and rock music are often treated as separate genres but the distinction has always been blurred. Motti Regev argues that pop-rock is best understood as a single musical form defined by the use of electric and electronic instruments, amplification and related techniques. The history of pop-rock extends from the emergence of rock'n'roll in the 1950s to a variety of contemporary fashions and trends rock, punk, soul, funk, techno, hip hop, indie, metal, pop and many more. This book offers a highly original account of the emergence of pop-rock music as a global phenomenon in which Anglo-American and many other national and ethnic variants interact in complex ways. Pop-rock is analysed as a prime instance of 'aesthetic cosmopolitanism' that is, the gradual formation, in late modernity, of world culture as a single interconnected entity in which different social groupings around the world increasingly share common ground in their aesthetic perceptions, expressive forms and cultural practices. Drawing on a wide array of examples, this path-breaking book will be of great interest to students and scholars in cultural sociology, media and cultural studies as well as the study of popular music.