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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Cultural studies > Popular culture
Mary Pipher’s groundbreaking investigation of America’s girl-poisoning culture,” Reviving Ophelia, established its author as one of the nation’s foremost authorities on family issues. In Letters to a Young Therapist, Pipher shares what she has learned in thirty years of clinical practice, helping warring families, alienated adolescents, and harried professionals restore peace and beauty to their lives. Through an exhilarating mix of storytelling and sharp-eyed observation, Pipher reveals her refreshingly inventive approach to therapy,fiercely optimistic, free of dogma or psychobabble, and laced with generous warmth and practical common sense. Whether she’s recommending daily swims for a sluggish teenager, encouraging a timid husband to become bolder, or simply bearing witness to a bereaved parent’s sorrow, Pipher’s compassion and insight shine from every page. Newly updated with a preface by the author addressing the changes in therapy over the last decade and the surprising challenges of the digital age, Letters to a Young Therapist is a powerfully engaging guide to living a healthy life.
As blogs have evolved over the last few years, they have begun to take on distinct characteristics depending on audience and purpose. Though political blogs remain the most high profile (and most read), other types of blogs are gaining in strength and visibility. This book-a follow-up volume to Barlow's Rise of the Blogosphere, which examined the historical context for the modern blog-provides an examination of the many current aspects of the blogosphere, from the political to the professional to the personal, with many stops in between. Given that millions of blogs have been created over the past five years and yet more come online at an undiminished rate, and given that enthusiasm for both reading them and writing them has yet to wane, it is likely that the blog explosion will continue indefinitely. As blogs have evolved over the last few years, they have begun to take on distinct characteristics depending on audience and purpose. Though political blogs remain the most high profile (and most read), other types of blogs are gaining in strength and visibility. This book-a follow-up volume to Barlow's Rise of the Blogosphere, which examined the historical context for the modern blog-provides an examination of the many current aspects of the blogosphere, from the political to the professional to the personal, with many stops in between. Areas covered include the personal blog; the political blog; the use of blogs by various religious communities both for discussion within communities and for outreach; the growth of blogs dedicated to specific geographic communities, and their relations with older local media; blogs dedicated to technical subjects, particularly relating to computers; blogs and business; blogs sparked by video games, movies, music, and other forms of entertainment; and more. Given that millions of blogs have been created over the past five years and yet more come online at an undiminished rate, and given that enthusiasm for both reading them and writing for them has yet to wane, it is likely that the blog explosion will continue indefinitely.
The evidence of death and dying has been removed from the everyday lives of most Westerners. Yet we constantly live with the awareness of our vulnerability as mortals. Drawing on a range of genres, bands and artists, Mortality and Music examines the ways in which popular music has responded to our awareness of the inevitability of death and the anxiety it can evoke. Exploring bereavement, depression, suicide, violence, gore, and fans' responses to the deaths of musicians, it argues for the social and cultural significance of popular music's treatment of mortality and the apparent absurdity of existence.
This unique collection frames the classic debates on objects and aims to generate new ones by reshaping the ways in which the object can be taught and studied, from a wide variety of disciplines and fields. The Object Reader elucidates objects in many of their diverse roles, dynamics and capacities. Precisely because the dedicated study of objects does not reside neatly within a single discipline, this collection is comprised of numerous academic fields. The selected writings are drawn from from anthropology, art history, classical studies, critical theory, cultural studies, digital media, design history, disability studies, feminism, film and television studies, history, philosophy, psychoanalysis, social studies of science and technology, religious studies and visual culture. The collection, composed of twentieth and twenty-first century writing also seeks to make its own contribution through original work, in the form of twenty-five short 'object lessons' commissioned specifically for this project. These new and innovative studies from key writers across a range of disciplines will enable students to look upon their surroundings with trained eyes to search out their own 'object studies'.
A rousing, poignant look at the cultural history of rock & roll during the early 1960s. In the early 1960s, the nation was on track to fulfill its destiny in what was being called "the American Century." Baby boomers and rock & roll shared the country's optimism and energy. For "one brief, shining moment" in the early 1960s, both President John F. Kennedy and young people across the country were riding high. The dream of a New Frontier would soon give way, however, to a new reality involving assassinations, the Vietnam War, Cold War crises, the civil rights movement, a new feminist movement, and various culture wars. From the former host of NPR's Rock & Roll America, Richard Aquila's Rock & Roll in Kennedy's America offers an in-depth look at early 1960s rock & roll, as well as an unconventional history of Kennedy's America through the lens of popular music. Based on extensive research and exclusive interviews with Dion, Bo Diddley, Brenda Lee, Martha Reeves, Pete Seeger, Bob Gaudio, Dick Clark, and other legendary figures, the book rejects the myth that Buddy Holly's death in 1959 was "the day the music died." It proves that rock & roll during the early 1960s was vibrant and in tune with the history and events of this colorful era. These interviews and Aquila's research reveal unique insights and new details about politics, gender, race, ethnicity, youth culture, and everyday life. Rock & Roll in Kennedy's America recalls an important chapter in rock & roll and American history.
This work explores, through case studies and critical analyses, how media depictions affect the social construction of gender, sexuality, and identity. Through a combination of historical and contemporary topics, scholars examine the stereotypical portrayal of women and men and the contexts within which these stereotypes are illustrated. The studies also discuss the sociopolitical implications of symbols and images associated with these gender representations. Concrete references to particular media support both the methodological and theoretical approaches of the different essays. These quantitative and qualitative studies expose the myriad ways in which the media intervenes in our perception of popular culture. Media and mass communication scholars will appreciate the many different media forms these essays encompass. The multicultural and gendered perspectives that comprise these writings will also appeal to students and educators of gender studies and contemporary rhetoric. Chapters are grouped in subsections that include newspaper, visual image in media, magazine, television, video, film, and cyberspace.
Ten songs, from ""Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home"" (1902) to ""You Made Me Love You"" (1913), ignited the development of the classic pop ballad. In this exploration of how the style of the Great American Songbook evolved, Michael G. Garber unveils the complicated, often-hidden origins of these enduring, pioneering works. He riffs on colorful stories that amplify the rising of an American folk art composed by innovators both famous and obscure. Songwriters, and also the publishers, arrangers, and performers, achieved together a collective genius that moved hearts worldwide to song. These classic ballads originated all over the nation-Louisiana, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan-and then the Tin Pan Alley industry, centered in New York, made the tunes unforgettable sensations. From ragtime to bop, cabaret to radio, new styles of music and modes for its dissemination invented and reinvented the intimate, personal American love ballad, creating something both swinging and tender. Rendered by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and a host of others, recordings and movies carried these songs across the globe. Using previously underexamined sources, Garber demonstrates how these songs shaped the music industry and the lives of ordinary Americans. Besides covering famous composers like Irving Berlin, this history also introduces such little-known figures as Maybelle Watson, who had to sue to get credit and royalties for creating the central content of the lyric for ""My Melancholy Baby."" African American Frank Williams contributed to the seminal ""Some of These Days"" but was forgotten for decades. The ten ballads explored here permanently transformed American popular song.
The first decades of the twentieth century were years of dramatic
change in Zanzibar, a time when the social, economic, and political
lives of island residents were in incredible flux, framed by the
abolition of slavery, the introduction of colonialism, and a tide
of urban migration. "Pastimes and Politics" explores the era from
the perspective of the urban poor, highlighting the numerous and
varied ways that recently freed slaves and other immigrants to town
struggled to improve their individual and collective lives and to
create a sense of community within this new environment. In this
study Laura Fair explores a range of cultural and social practices
that gave expression to slaves' ideas of emancipation, as well as
how such ideas and practices were gendered.
This anthology hosts a collection of essays examining the role of comics as portals for historical and academic content, while keeping the approach on an international market verses the American one. Few resources currently exist showing the cross-disciplinary aspects of comics. Some of the chapters examine the use of Wonder Woman during World War II, the development and culture of French comics, and theories of Locke and Hobbs in regards to the state of nature and the bonds of community. More so, the continual use of comics for the retelling of classic tales and current events demonstrates that the genre has long passed the phase of for children's eyes only. Additionally, this anthology also weaves graphic novels into the dialogue with comics.
Dogs eat burritos, camels smoke cigarettes, and frogs drink beer. Welcome to the Century of the Consumer. In the 20th century, Americans were romanced by consumer culture, which in turn reflected the changing attitudes, priorities, and values of the country. This book compiles entries on 100 consumer products--ten per decade--that figured prominently in the rise of consumer culture in the United States, telling the story behind the century's most popular products, slogans, and symbols. A unique format provides glimpses into American popular culture from each decade in the century. In addition to the history of advertising, economics, and the media, students will learn how perceptions of class, gender, and race were conveyed through advertising-and how those perceptions changed from 1900 to 2000. A-Z entries for each decade include bibliographic information on the product, as well as vivid illustrations showing the visual evolution of advertising icons and strategies throughout the century.
Poetic Song Verse: Blues-Based Popular Music and Poetry invokes and critiques the relationship between blues-based popular music and poetry in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The volume is anchored in music from the 1960s, when a concentration of artists transformed modes of popular music from entertainment to art-that-entertains. Musician Mike Mattison and literary historian Ernest Suarez synthesize a wide range of writing about blues and rock-biographies, histories, articles in popular magazines, personal reminiscences, and a selective smattering of academic studies-to examine the development of a relatively new literary genre dubbed by the authors as "poetic song verse." They argue that poetic song verse was nurtured in the fifties and early sixties by the blues and in Beat coffee houses, and matured in the mid-to-late sixties in the art of Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Gil Scott-Heron, Van Morrison, and others who used voice, instrumentation, arrangement, and production to foreground semantically textured, often allusive, and evocative lyrics that resembled and engaged poetry. Among the questions asked in Poetic Song Verse are: What, exactly, is this new genre? What were its origins? And how has it developed? How do we study and assess it? To answer these questions, Mattison and Suarez engage in an extended discussion of the roots of the relationship between blues-based music and poetry and address how it developed into a distinct literary genre. Unlocking the combination of richly textured lyrics wedded to recorded music reveals a dynamism at the core of poetic song verse that can often go unrealized in what often has been considered merely popular entertainment. This volume balances historical details and analysis of particular songs with accessibility to create a lively, intelligent, and cohesive narrative that provides scholars, teachers, students, music influencers, and devoted fans with an overarching perspective on the poetic power and blues roots of this new literary genre.
Tracing public and critical responses to TV from its pioneering days, this book gathers and gives context to the reactions of those who saw television's early broadcasts-from the privileged few who witnessed experimental and limited-schedule programming in the 1920s and 1930s, to those who bought TV sets and hoisted antennae in the post-World War II television boom, to still more who invested in color receivers and cable subscriptions in the 1960s. While the first two major sections of this study show the views of television's first broad public, the third section shows how social and media critics, literary and visual artists, and others have expressed their charmed or chagrinned responses to television in its earliest decades. Media-jaded Americans, especially younger ones, would be surprised to know how eagerly their forebears anticipated the arrival of television. Tracing public and critical responses to TV from its pioneering days, this book gathers and gives context to the reactions of those who saw television's early broadcasts-from the privileged few who witnessed experimental and limited-schedule programming in the 1920s and 1930s, to those who bought TV sets and hoisted antennae in the post-World War II television boom, to still more who invested in color receivers and cable subscriptions in the 1960s. Viewers' comments recall the excitement of owning the first TV receiver in the neighborhood, show the vexing challenges of reception, and record the pleasure that all young and many older watchers found in early network and local programs from the beginning to the fast-changing 1960s. While the first two major sections of this study show the views of television's first broad public, the third section shows how social and media critics, literary and visual artists, and others have expressed their charmed or chagrinned responses to television in its earliest decades.
While music lovers and music historians alike understand that folkmusic played an increasingly pivotal role in American labor and politicsduring the economic and social tumult of the Great Depression, how did thisrelationship come to be? Ronald D. Cohen sheds new light on the complexcultural history of folk music in America, detailing the musicians, governmentagencies, and record companies that had a lasting impact during the1930s and beyond. Covering myriad musical styles and performers, Cohennarrates a singular history that begins in nineteenth-century labor politicsand popular music culture, following the rise of unions and Communismto the subsequent Red Scare and increasing power of the Conservativemovement in American politics-with American folk and vernacular musiccentered throughout. Detailing the influence and achievements of such notablemusicians as Pete Seeger, Big Bill Broonzy, and Woody Guthrie, Cohenexplores the intersections of politics, economics, and race, using the rootsof American folk music to explore one of the United States' most troubledtimes. Becoming entangled with the ascending American left wing, folkmusic became synonymous with protest and sharing the troubles of real peoplethrough song.
Bored with the same old scare-and-scream routine, Pumpkin King Jack
Skellington longs to spread the joy of Christmas. But his merry mission
puts Santa in jeopardy and creates a nightmare for good little boys and
girls everywhere. Now, fans of Tim Burton’s iconic film can countdown
to Christmas with this pop-up advent calendar. Inside, readers will
find a perfectly ghastly pop-up tree. Hidden in compartments beneath it
are twenty-five removable and displayable ornaments―from skeletal
reindeer to a man-eating wreath―to hang on the tree. Also inside is a
28-page softcover guidebook containing fascinating facts about
Halloween Town and its residents.
The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music Volume 7 is one of five volumes within the 'Locations' strand of the series. This volume discusses the popular music of Europe in a historical, geographical, demographical, political, economic, and cultural context. It also examines the genres associated with the region, significant venues such as theatres, dance halls, clubs and bars, and notable performers and other practitioners such as producers, engineers, and technological innovators. The volume consists of over 100 entries written by more than 60 leading popular music scholars and practitioners, including Paolo Prato on Italy and Alf Bjoernberg on Sweden. This and all other volumes of the Encyclopedia are now available through an online version of the Encyclopedia: https://www.bloomsburypopularmusic.com/encyclopedia-work?docid=BPM_reference_EPMOW. A general search function for the whole Encyclopedia is also available on this site. A subscription is required to access individual entries. Please see: https://www.bloomsburypopularmusic.com/for-librarians.
Trance events have an uncanny ability to capture an era, and captivate an audience of travellers occupying the eternal theatre of the dance floor. As this book shows, the tendency within psytrance is to thwart the passage of time, to prolong the night, for those who adopt a liminal lifestyle. Amid the hustle and hubris of the psytrance carnival there is a peaceful repose that you sometimes catch when you've drifted into a sea of outstretched limbs, bodies swaying like a field of sunflowers in a light breeze. And you feel intense joy in this fleeting moment. You are the moment. You are inside the flow. You are all. Embodying the poetry of dance, you are living evidence that nothing lasts. And this is a deep revelation of the mystical function of trance. It is difficult to emerge from this little death, because one does not want the party to end. But it must end, even so that it can recommence - so that one can return to repeat the cycle. The result of fifteen years of research in over a dozen countries, this book applies a sharp lens on a little understood global dance culture that has mushroomed all over the world since its beginnings in the diverse psychedelic music scenes flourishing in Goa in the 1970s and 1980s. The paramount expression of this movement has been the festival, from small parties to major international events such as Portugal's Boom Festival, which promotes itself as a world-summit of visionary arts and trance, a "united tribe of the world". Via first-hand accounts of the scenes, events and music of psychedelic trance in Australia, Israel, Germany, Italy, the UK, the US, Turkey and other places, the book thoroughly documents this transnational movement with its diverse aesthetic roots, multiple national translations and internal controversies. As a multi-sited ethnography and an examination of the digital, chemical, cyber and media assemblage constituting psytrance, the book explores the integrated role that technology and spirituality have played in the formation of this visionary arts movement and shows how these event-cultures accommodate rites of risk and consciousness, a complex circumstance demanding revision of existing approaches to ritual, music and culture.
Get Your Shit Together is the first book that exclusively features recent artwork in color by beloved British artist David Shrigley. This volume celebrates Shrigley's absurd, deadpan sensibility through both his signature drawing style and accompanying text. Organized by chapters with titles such as Stupid, Nonsense, Dirt, Fear, Paranoia, Love, and Self Delusion, this collection is sure to delight die-hard Shrigley fans and new ones alike. This is the largest-format book to date on Shrigley's prolific work, and features design details such as a ribbon marker with one of his mordant sayings printed on it, as well as hand-written, humorous essays throughout.
"Goth Culture" explores Goths' expressive practices of dress, fashion, style and the body, in relation to issues of identity and representation. The book shares vivid accounts of the author's experiences exploring gender and sexuality and doing fieldwork in the Gothic subculture. Through the voices of Goths from the UK, US and Germany, it draws the reader into the gender-bending and heavily gendered world of Goth. It reassesses the significance of the dress of both male and female Goths, examining these striking and often highly creative subcultural fashion displays. Using a wide range of methods and sources, from ethnography to critical examination of music, literature, social theory and different types of popular media, "Goth Culture" offers an original and accessible analysis of the fashion, media and counterculture of the Gothic world.
The media star has become a powerful, almost unparalleled, cultural sign, even as the star system has undergone radical transformation since the era of the Hollywood studio system. Today's film industry continues to market and promote its products through actors in ways that seek to capture the often elusive quality that a star can embody. Using contemporary stars such as Robert De Niro, Keanu Reeves, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Dennis Hopper, this anthology of essays applies a variety of theoretical tools in its attempt to understand how we interpret stars, and how we can begin to understand their cultural significance. Likewise, the study explores how the star system has become an increasingly complex phenomenon within society at large, extending its impact beyond the cinema into music, sports, and fashion. Many of the essays collected here consider this shift and examine how personae including the director (Sam Peckinpah), the royalty (Princess Diana) and even the digital star (Lara Croft) have captured the cultural imagination and have come to attain qualities as star-like as those of the silver screen.
Split into four sections, Seeing Fans analyzes the representations of fans in the mass media through a diverse range of perspectives. This collection opens with a preface by noted actor and fan Orlando Jones (Sleepy Hollow), whose recent work on fandom (appearing with Henry Jenkins at Comic Con and speaking at the Fan Studies Network symposium) bridges the worlds of academia and the media industry. Section one focuses on the representations of fans in documentaries and news reports and includes an interview with Roger Nygard, director of Trekkies and Trekkies 2. The second section then examines fictional representations of fans through analyses of television and film, featuring interviews with Emily Perkins of Supernatural, Robert Burnett, director of the film Free Enterprise, and Luminosity, a fan who has been interviewed in the New York Magazine for her exemplary work in fandom. Section three explores cultural perspectives on fan representations, and includes an interview with Laurent Malaquais, director of Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony. Lastly, the final section looks at global perspectives on the ways fans have been represented and finishes with an interview with Jeanie Finlay, director of the music documentary Sound it Out. The collection then closes with an afterword by fan studies scholar Professor Matt Hills.
Reality programming-a broad title for unscripted shows that involve non-actors-is really an updated version of a classic television genre that had its first successes decades before The Real World or Survivor made their premieres. NBC launched Try and Do It, a show in which audience members attempted to complete tasks such as whistling with a mouthful of crackers, in 1949. In the 1950s Queen for a Day crowned the most down-trodden of its four contestants, draping her in a sable-trimmed robe and granting a previously declared wish. The wild success reality television has achieved of late has pushed the envelope of such programming ever further away from the genre's innocuous beginnings. The time is now ripe for a look back on how this genre has developed, what it reveals about us, and what has transformed it into one of the most powerful forms of entertainment on television today. Reality programming-a broad title for unscripted shows that involve non-actors-is really an updated version of a classic television genre that had its first successes decades before The Real World or Survivor made their premieres. NBC launched Try and Do It, a show in which audience members attempted to complete tasks such as whistling with a mouthful of crackers, in 1949. In the 1950s Queen for a Day crowned the most down-trodden of its four contestants at the end of each show, draping her in a sable-trimmed robe and granting a previously declared wish. The wild success reality television has achieved of late has pushed the envelope of such programming ever further away-from the genre's innocuous beginnings. The time is now ripe for a look back on how this genre has developed, what it reveals about us, and what has transformed it into one of the most powerful forms of entertainment on television today. Using interviews with network insiders, reality producers, and other experts, Richard Huff supplies fascinating insights into the diverse content and often erratic development of reality television programming, augmenting this information with illuminating general connections between the past and present forms these shows assume. From Queen for a Day through Extreme Makeover, from Cops to Fear Factor, the genre is placed before us in this exhaustive and many-sided account, an account that uncovers the foundations and the future potential of the compelling and dominating phenomenon that is reality television. |
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