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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Cultural studies > Popular culture
Essays by Ian Andrews, Roland Boer, Heidi Brush, Angela Hubler, Cynthia Anne McLeod, Carl F. Miller, Jana Mikota, Mervyn Nicholson, Jane Rosen, Sharon Smulders, Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak, Anastasia Ulanowicz, Naomi Wood A significant body of scholarship examines the production of children's literature by women and minorities, as well as the representation of gender, race, and sexuality. But few scholars have previously analyzed class in children's literature. This definitive collection remedies that by defining and exemplifying historical materialist approaches to children's literature. The introduction of Little Red Readings lucidly discusses characteristics of historical materialism, the methodological approach to the study of literature and culture first outlined by Karl Marx, defining key concepts and analyzing factors that have marginalized this tradition, particularly in the United States. The thirteen essays here analyze a wide range of texts--from children's bibles to Mary Poppins to The Hunger Games--using concepts in historical materialism from class struggle to the commodity. Essayists apply the work of Marxist theorists such as Ernst Bloch and Fredric Jameson to children's literature and film. Others examine the work of leftist writers in India, Germany, England, and the United States. The authors argue that historical materialist methodology is critical to the study of children's literature, as children often suffer most from inequality. Some of the critics in this collection reveal the ways that literature for children often functions to naturalize capitalist economic and social relations. Other critics champion literature that reveals to readers the construction of social reality and point to texts that enable an understanding of the role ordinary people might play in creating a more just future. The collection adds substantially to our understanding of the political and class character of children's literature worldwide, and contributes to the development of a radical history of children's literature.
The true life story of Elvis's original guitarist, the masterful Scotty Moore When Elvis Presley first showed up at Sam Phillips's Memphis-based Sun Records studio, he was a shy teenager in search of a sound. Phillips invited a local guitarist named Scotty Moore to stand in. Scotty listened carefully to the young singer and immediately realized that Elvis had something special. Along with bass player Bill Black, the trio recorded an old blues number called "That's All Right, Mama." It turned out to be Elvis's first single and the defining record of his early style, with a trilling guitar hook that swirled country and blues together and minted a sound with unforgettable appeal. Its success launched a whirlwind of touring, radio appearances, and Elvis's first break into movies. Scotty was there every step of the way as both guitarist and manager, until Elvis's new manager, Colonel Tom Parker, pushed him out. Scotty and Elvis would not perform together again until the classic 1968 "comeback" television special. Scotty never saw Elvis after that. With both Bill Black and Elvis gone, Scotty Moore is the only one left to tell the story of how Elvis and Scotty transformed popular music and how Scotty created the sound that became a prototype for so many rock guitarists to follow. Thoroughly updated, this edition delivers guitarist Scotty Moore's story as never before. Scotty Moore, Nashville, Tennessee, is the sole survivor of the Sun Records sessions of July 1954 during which he, Elvis Presley, and Bill Black, with Sam Phillips at the engineering sound board, blended country and blues into a new art form that would shake up American culture for decades to come. James L. Dickerson, Jackson, Mississippi, is a freelance author and journalist who has published dozens of books.
Contributions by Phil Bevin, Blair Davis, Marc DiPaolo, Michele Fazio, James Gifford, Kelly Kanayama, Orion Ussner Kidder, Christina M. Knopf, Kevin Michael Scott, Andrew Alan Smith, and Terrence R. Wandtke In comic books, superhero stories often depict working-class characters who struggle to make ends meet, lead fulfilling lives, and remain faithful to themselves and their own personal code of ethics. Working-Class Comic Book Heroes: Class Conflict and Populist Politics in Comics examines working-class superheroes and other protagonists who populate heroic narratives in serialized comic books. Essayists analyze and deconstruct these figures, viewing their roles as fictional stand-ins for real-world blue-collar characters. Informed by new working-class studies, the book also discusses how often working-class writers and artists created these characters. Notably Jack Kirby, a working-class Jewish artist, created several of the most recognizable working-class superheroes, including Captain America and the Thing. Contributors weigh industry histories and marketing concerns as well as the fan community's changing attitudes towards class signifiers in superhero adventures. The often financially strapped Spider-Man proves to be a touchstone figure in many of these essays. Grant Morrison's Superman, Marvel's Shamrock, Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta, and The Walking Dead receive thoughtful treatment. While there have been many scholarly works concerned with issues of race and gender in comics, this book stands as the first to deal explicitly with issues of class, cultural capital, and economics as its main themes.
'The authors set out to develop a framework that explains if and how co-creation can be used as ''strategy-as-practice.'' In doing so, they have produced a wonderful case study on co-creating a city's living and public space, the next movement and cultural turn following the ''creative class'' studies in urban design. There are innovative uses of narrative analysis to provide multiple perspectives of the co-creative process. It contains valuable insights for anyone interested in urban design.' - Hans Hansen, Texas Tech University 'The book makes a very important contribution to the strategy-as-practice field as it proposes a thorough ethnography about how governments, academia, business, non-profits and citizens engage themselves in the strategic and collaborative process of planning. Drawing on a comprehensive and compelling notion of ''action nets'', the book provides a fascinating interpretive explanation that will be inspiring as well as for academics and practitioners. This timely volume raises a host of fascinating issues related to organizing and strategizing as ''co-creative practices'' and will be an invaluable resource across multiple domains and organizational research areas. Moreover, the book will convince you that ''small is beautiful''!' - Linda Rouleau, HEC Montreal, Canada Over the past three decades, the European Capital of Culture has grown into one of the most ambitious cultural programs in the world. Through the promotion of cultural diversity across the continent, the program fosters mutual understanding and intercultural dialogue among citizens, thereby increasing their sense of belonging to a community. This insightful book outlines potential avenues through which culture and creativity can raise the imaginative capability of citizens and harness opportunities tied to what the book calls 'culture-driven growth'. Building on three years of observations, interviews and research the authors argue that a 'strategy-as-practice' perspective can reveal how strategy making is enabled or constrained by organizational and social practices. The authors reveal how the 'sweet-spot' of city regeneration occurs where urban and cultural planning are aligned. They then evaluate the practice of 'co-creation' within organizing bodies and investigate the extent to which its success depends on a fusion of top-down rules and bottom-up action. Urban Strategies for Culture-Driven Growth will appeal to international scholars and students in organization studies, geography, city governance and planning, urban design, and urban and regional development. Policymakers and planners will also find it to be a valuable resource.
Applying the theories of Popular Culture, Visual Culture, Performance Studies, (Post)Feminism, and Film Studies, this interdisciplinary and well-crafted book leads you to the fascinating and intriguing world of popular film, (musical) theatre, and TV drama. It explores the classical and contemporary cases of the literature works, both Eastern and Western, adapted, represented and transformed into the interesting artistic medium in films, performances, TV dramas, musicals, and AI robot theatre/films. 'Iris Tuan's book is wide ranging in scope and diversity, examining theatre, music, film and television productions from both Western and Asian countries. Tuan also surveys an extensive range of critical and theoretical perspectives, especially from performance studies and popular cultural studies, to offer context for her descriptions of the many different works. Some of her examples are well-known (Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, Disney's The Lion King) while others little known outside their place of origin (such as the Hakka Theatre of Taiwan) -- all are approached by the author with enthusiasm.' -Susan Bennett, Professor of English, University of Calgary, Canada 'Tuan takes us through multiple examples of contemporary popular performance in theatre/film/TV ranging from "high" art sources (Shakespeare or Journey to the West in films, Hirata's robotic theatre experiments) to "low" (Taiwanese TV soap operas Hakka Theatre: Roseki and Story of Yangxi Palace, Korean film Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds). The reader moves at a speed-dating pace through contemporary culture production and interpretive theories, encountering significant works, controversies (i. e., yellow face), and conundrums selected from China, Korea, Japan and the U. S. and filtered through a Taiwanese female gaze.' -Kathy Foley, Professor of Theatre Arts, University of California Santa Cruz, USA
"Filmspeak" is an accessible, innovative book which uses specific examples to show how once arcane literary and cultural theory has infiltrated popular culture. Theory reaches us in ways we do not even realize. Issues such as the nature of knowledge or truth, the function of personal response in interpretation, the nature of the forces of politics, the female alternative to the male view of the world, are fundamental for all of us. And intelligent analysis of the relationship between literary theory and popular culture can help us to understand our fast-changing world.Here, experienced literary scholar and teacher Edward L. Tomarken explains how it is possible to study the rudiments of literary theory by watching and analyzing contemporary mainstream movies - from "The Dark Knight" to "Kill Bill," and from "The Social Network" to "The Devil Wears Prada." Theorists discussed include Foucault, Jameson, Iser, and Cixous. Tomarken brilliantly demonstrates that anyone can grasp modern literary theory by way of mainstream movies without having to wade through stacks of impenetrable jargon.
Few stories in the annals of American counterculture are as intriguing or dramatic as that of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Dubbed the "Hippie Mafia," the Brotherhood began in the mid-1960s as a small band of peace-loving, adventure-seeking surfers in Southern California. After discovering LSD, they took to Timothy Leary's mantra of "Turn on, tune in, and drop out" and resolved to make that vision a reality by becoming the biggest group of acid dealers and hashish smugglers in the nation, and literally providing the fuel for the psychedelic revolution in the process. Just days after California became the first state in the union to ban LSD, the Brotherhood formed a legally registered church in its headquarters at Mystic Arts World on Pacific Coast Highway in Laguna Beach, where they sold blankets and other countercultural paraphernalia retrieved through surfing safaris and road trips to exotic locales in Asia and South America. Before long, they also began to sell Afghan hashish, Hawaiian pot (the storied "Maui Wowie"), and eventually Colombian cocaine, much of which the Brotherhood smuggled to California in secret compartments inside surfboards and Volkswagen minibuses driven across the border. They also befriended Leary himself, enlisting him in the goal of buying a tropical island where they could install the former Harvard philosophy professor and acid prophet as the high priest of an experimental utopia. The Brotherhood's most legendary contribution to the drug scene was homemade: Orange Sunshine, the group's nickname for their trademark orange-colored acid tablet that happened to produce an especially powerful trip. Brotherhood foot soldiers passed out handfuls of the tablets to communes, at Grateful Dead concerts, and at love-ins up and down the coast of California and beyond. The Hell's Angels, Charles Mason and his followers, and the unruly crowd at the infamous Altamont music festival all tripped out on this acid. Jimi Hendrix even appeared in a film starring Brotherhood members and performed a private show for the fugitive band of outlaws on the slope of a Hawaiian volcano. Journalist Nicholas Schou takes us deep inside the Brotherhood, combining exclusive interviews with both the group's surviving members as well as the cops who chased them. A wide-sweeping narrative of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll (and more drugs) that runs from Laguna Beach to Maui to Afghanistan, "Orange Sunshine" explores how America moved from the era of peace and free love into a darker time of hard drugs and paranoia.
This book is a comprehensive, historical bible on the subject of urban street dance and its influence on modern dance, hip hop, and pop culture. Urban street dance-which is now referred to across the globe as "break dance" or "hip-hop dance"-was born 15 years prior to the hip hop movement. In today's pop culture, the dance innovators from "back in the day" have been forgotten, except when choreographic echoes of their groundbreaking dance forms are repeatedly recycled in today's media. Sadly, this is still the case when dance moves that were engendered from 1965 through the 1970s on the streets of Reseda, South Central Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, and Fresno, CA; or in the Bronx in New York City, are utilized by modern performers. In Underground Dance Masters: Final History of a Forgotten Era, an urban street dancer who was part of the scene in the early 1970s sets the record straight, blowing the lid off this uniquely American dance style and culture. This text redefines hip hop dance and the origins of a worldwide phenomenon, explaining the origins of classic forms such as Funk Boogaloo, Locking, Popping, Roboting, and B'boying-some of the most important developments in modern dance that directly affect today's pop culture. Includes coverage of all of the major players in urban dance Places current dance phenomena-from the moves of Usher to the choreography of High School Musical-in a historical context that stretches half a century Includes interviews and photos to further bring the rich history of urban dance to life
Joe R. Lansdale (b. 1951), the award-winning author of such novels as Cold in July (1989) and The Bottoms (2000), as well as the popular Hap and Leonard series, has been publishing novels since 1981. Lansdale has developed a tremendous cult audience willing to follow him into any genre he chooses to write in, including horror, western, crime, adventure, and fantasy. Within these genres, his stories, novels, and novellas explore friendship, race, and life in East Texas. His distinctive voice is often funny and always unique, as characterized by such works as Bubba Ho-Tep (1994), a novella that centers on Elvis Presley, his friend who believes himself to be John F. Kennedy, and a soul-sucking ancient mummy. This same novella won a Bram Stoker Award, one of the ten Bram Stoker Awards given to Lansdale thus far in his illustrious career. Wielding a talent that extends beyond the page to the screen, Landsdale has also written episodes for Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series. Conversations with Joe R. Lansdale brings together interviews from newspapers, magazines, and podcasts conducted throughout the prolific author's career. The collection includes conversations between Lansdale and other noted peers like Robert McCammon and James Grady; two podcast transcripts that have never before appeared in print; and a brand-new interview, exclusive to the volume. In addition to shedding light on his body of literary work and process as a writer, this collection also shares Lansdale's thoughts on comics, atheism, and martial arts.
Increasingly over the past decade, fan credentials on the part of writers, directors, and producers have come to be seen as a guarantee of quality media making - the "fanboy auteur". Figures like Joss Whedon are both one of "us" and one of "them". This is a strategy of marketing and branding - it is a claim from the auteur himself or industry PR machines that the presence of an auteur who is also a fan means the product is worth consuming. Such claims that fan credentials guarantee quality are often contested, with fans and critics alike rejecting various auteur figures as the true leader of their respective franchises. That split, between assertions of fan and auteur status and acceptance (or not) of that status, is key to unravelling the fan auteur. In A Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy: The Construction of Authorship in Transmedia Franchises, authors Anastasia Salter and Mel Stanfill examine this phenomenon through a series of case studies featuring fanboys. The volume discusses both popular fanboys, such as J.J. Abrams, Kevin Smith, and Joss Whedon, as well as fangirls like J.K. Rowling, E.L. James, and Patty Jenkins, and dissects how the fanboy-fangirl auteur dichotomy is constructed and defended by popular media and fans in online spaces, and how this discourse has played in maintaining the exclusionary status quo of geek culture. This book is particularly timely given current discourse, including such incidents as the controversy surrounding Joss Whedon's so-called feminism, the publication of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and contestation over authorial voices in the DC cinematic universe, as well as broader conversations about toxic masculinity and sexual harassment in Hollywood.
IN LITTLE MORE THAN HALF A DECADE, Facebook has gone from a
dorm-room novelty to a company with 500 million users. It is one of
the fastest growing companies in history, an essential part of the
social life not only of teenagers but hundreds of millions of
adults worldwide. As Facebook spreads around the globe, it creates
surprising effects--even becoming instrumental in political
protests from Colombia to Iran.
Russia in Britain offers the first comprehensive account of the breadth and depth of the British fascination with Russian and Soviet culture, tracing its transformative effect on British intellectual life from the 1880s, the decade which saw the first sustained interest in Russian literature, to 1940, the eve of the Soviet Union's entry into the Second World War. By focusing on the role played by institutions, disciplines and groups, libraries, periodicals, government agencies, concert halls, publishing houses, theatres, and film societies, this collection marks an important departure from standard literary critical narratives, which have tended to highlight the role of a small number of individuals, notably Sergei Diaghilev, Constance Garnett, Theodore Komisarjevsky, Katherine Mansfield, George Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf. Drawing on recent research and newly available archives, Russia in Britain shifts attention from individual figures to the networks within which they operated, and uncovers the variety of forces that enabled and structured the British engagement with Russian culture. The resulting narrative maps an intricate pattern of interdisciplinary relations and provides the foundational research for a new understanding of Anglo-Russian/Soviet interaction. In this, it makes a major contribution to the current debates about transnationalism, cosmopolitanism and 'global modernisms' that are reshaping our knowledge of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British culture.
Although the last three decades have offered a growing body of scholarship on images of fantastic women in popular culture, these studies either tend to focus on one particular variety of fantastic female (the action or sci-fi heroine), or on her role in a specific genre (villain, hero, temptress). This edited collection strives to define the ""Woman Fantastic"" more fully. The Woman Fantastic may appear in speculative or realist settings, but her presence is always recognizable. Through futuristic contexts, fantasy worlds, alternate histories, or the display of superpowers, these insuperable women challenge the laws of physics, chemistry, and/or biology. In chapters devoted to certain television programs, adult and young adult literature, and comics, contributors discuss feminist negotiation of today's economic and social realities. Senior scholars and rising academic stars offer compelling analyses of fantastic women from Wonder Woman and She-Hulk to Talia Al Ghul and Martha Washington; from Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Norville series to Cinda Williams Chima's The Seven Realms series; and from Battlestar Gallactica's female Starbuck to Game of Thrones's Sansa and even Elaine Barrish Hammond of USA's Political Animals. This volume furnishes an important contribution to ongoing discussions of gender and feminism in popular culture.
In The Anti-Heroine on Contemporary Television: Transgressive Women, Molly Brost explores the various applications and definitions of the term anti-heroine, showing that it has been applied to a wide variety of female characters on television that have little in common beyond their failure to behave in morally "correct" and traditionally feminine ways. Rather than dismiss the term altogether, Brost employs the term to examine what types of behaviors and characteristics cause female characters to be labeled anti-heroines, how those qualities and behaviors differ from those that cause men to be labeled anti-heroes, and how the label reflects society's attitudes toward and beliefs about women. Using popular television series such as Jessica Jones, Scandal, and The Good Place, Brost acknowledges the problematic nature of the term anti-heroine and uses it as a starting point to study the complex women on television, analyzing how the broadening spectrum of character types has allowed more nuanced portrayals of women's lives on television.
Russia's provinces have long held a prominent place in the nation's cultural imagination. Lyudmila Parts looks at the contested place of the provinces in twenty-first-century Russian literature and popular culture, addressing notions of nationalism, authenticity, Orientalism, Occidentalism, and postimperial identity. Surveying a largely unexplored body of Russian journalism, literature, and film from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Parts finds that the harshest portrayals of the provinces arise within ""high"" culture. Popular culture, however, has increasingly turned from the newly prosperous, multiethnic, and westernized Moscow to celebrate the hinterlands as repositories of national traditions and moral strength. This change, she argues, has directed debate about Russia's identity away from its loss of imperial might and global prestige and toward a hermetic national identity based on the opposition of ""us vs. us"" rather than ""us vs. them."" She offers an intriguing analysis of the contemporary debate over what it means to be Russian and where ""true"" Russians reside.
This one-volume reference provides a comprehensive overview of gambling in the Americas, examining the history, morality, market growth, and economics of the gaming industry. This is the most complete encyclopedia of gambling, covering the industry in great detail including the players, the games, the venues, and the surrounding social issues. Updates in this second edition reveal the impact of technological advances on the games, the growing legislation regulating the industry, and the expanding global footprint of gambling across the world-from Manitoba to Montana. Author William N. Thompson postulates on the impact of gambling on local communities and shows how the U.S. gaming industry is tied to the global market, most notably gaming expansion in Macau and Singapore. The book addresses the various forms of gaming, such as casino-based and online gambling, sports betting, and lotteries. Additional content examines the social issue of problem and pathological gambling and addresses the rehabilitation programs available for the mitigation and treatment of gambling problems. Includes documents from prominent court cases Profiles leading persons and organizations dealing with gambling operations Features a detailed chronology of events including legalization and laws on Internet gaming Offers an expanded bibliography that provides additional resources for further study
Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of Cornwall, or as it is sometimes obscurely referred to, Merry Jack. Though this isn't the usual side of the county the tourists, travellers and residents see. This is the real Cornwall, the strange and twisted nooks and crannies of the county's bizarre history - past, present and future. Following on from the bestselling Portico Strangest titles now comes a book devoted to England's gloriously coastal, yet most haunted, region. Located in the toes of the outstretched legs of Britain's old man, Cornwall is a county with more strangeness than you can shake a Cornish pasty at. Cornwall is an area of outstanding natural beauty, as well as outstanding strangness - from ye olde tales of plundering pirates to foulish ghosts drinking in local pubs right through to the most famous of all myths - the bizarre beast that forever stalks Bodmin Moor. Spooky. Cornwall's Strangest Tales is a treasure trove of the hilarious, the odd and the baffling - an alternative travel guide to some of the county's best-kept secrets. Read on, if you dare You have been warned. Word count: 35,000
This book develops the idea of the "Eastern" as an analytically significant genre of film. Positioned in counterpoint to the Western, the famed cowboy genre of the American frontier, the "Eastern" encompasses films that depict the eastern and southern frontiers of Euro-American expansion. Examining six films in particular-Gunga Din (1939), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Heat and Dust (1983), A Passage to India (1984), Indochine (1992), and The English Patient (1996)-the author explores the duality of the "Eastern" as both aggressive and seductive, depicting conquest and romance at the same time. In juxtaposing these two elements, the book seeks to reveal the double process by which the "Eastern" both diminishes the "East" and Global South and reinforces ignorance about these regions' histories and complexity, thereby setting the stage for ever-escalating political aggression.
This book uses corpus and multimodal methods to present a comparative study of three major Canadian TV crime series, Flashpoint (2008-2010), Motive (2013-2015) and 19-2 (2014-2016), paying special attention to cinematic techniques. Following an overview of the methodology and the Canadian cultural milieu of the study, the author approaches the three series as complex cultural and linguistic productions that depend heavily on a national appropriation of a genre whose popularity is growing internationally. The book investigates the verbal, nonverbal and paraverbal strategies employed by each production to create the patterns that make this genre appealing to a variety of audiences, and uncovers some of the psychological processes at work in contemporary Canadian TV crime serials. This book will be of interest to scholars in fields including Corpus Linguistics, Multimodal Studies, Canadian Studies, Media and Communication Studies, and Specialised Discourse.
MASS MARKET RELEASE.. JUMPOFF; Hip Hop's Mistress Tell's All. Jara Everett; Hip Hop's Mistress releases her first Tell all Auto Biography; taking you on a journey into the world of Hip Hop and Entertainment from Chicago, Miami, LA to Atlanta. You will experience laughter, disbelief and erotic pleasures as she shares her experiences with R. Kelly, Suge Knight, Tupac, Martin Lawrence, Young Jeezy, Shawty Redd, Jazze Pha, Too Short, Gary Busey and more in this epic tell all; adequately titled Jumpoff
This book is about television in Latin America. Its national and regional industries create most television programming there within genres developed over time in the region. However, part of the programming has always come from the U.S., Europe and elsewhere. With cable, satellite and now streaming TV, that inflow of foreign programming has increased substantially. While many in the audience still prefer national or regional programs for their cultural proximity, an increasing number among the upper-middle and middle classes, particularly the young, are turning to the new foreign services, like Netflix, Amazon and Disney for class distinction, cosmopolitanism or other motives. Among the television industries, global, regional and national actors are creating a variety of programs and channels (broadcast, pay-TV and streaming) to segment and appeal to different parts of the audience.
Authors in this illuminating book probe the social and spiritual contexts from which select iconic figures emerge as innovators and cultural leaders and draw material into forms that subsequent generations consider pioneering and emblematic. The book identifies creators such as novelists, poets, performers and dramatists who are leaders in their respective genres, and in culture and society at large, and examines the influence exerted on and by their works. Critics and admirers understand the cultural leaders discussed in this book as significant figures affecting social and political change. The chapters cover a range of genres, time periods and individuals, mixing literary and historical analysis with concerns relevant to leadership studies. The book includes a cross-disciplinary analysis focusing on its subjects' roles as leaders within and beyond their fields. Scholars and students of religion, history and popular culture with wide-ranging interests in the humanities will find this book a unique and fascinating look at cultural leadership. Contributors include: J.L. Airey, Y. Ariel, K.M.S. Bezio, W. Clark Gilpin, T. Fessenden, K. Lofton, E. Marienberg, C. McCracken-Flesher, S. Paulsell, C.N. Pondrom, J. Wiesenfarth |
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