"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 definitive guide to kindness - a book full of inspirational ideas, quotes and famous acts of kindness, at a time when we need it most. "If you see someone without a smile today, give 'em yours." Dolly Parton This empowering guide to kindness will inspire you to make a real difference to your life and the lives of others. Inside you'll find: - over 50 stories about famous - and not so famous - acts of kindness, from Jacinda Ardern's empathetic leadership during the Coronavirus pandemic to Marcus Rashford's determination to support underprivileged children, and the real story of the WWI Christmas Truce. - suggestions for acts of kindness you can carry out yourself, to improve the lives of those around you - quotes about kindness to help encourage change, from people like Kamala Harris, Beyonce and RuPaul This is the perfect gift for yourself or for a friend - because Kindness is Power.

This unique study explores the vampire as host and guest, captor and hostage: a perfect lover and force of seductive predation. From Dracula and Carmilla, to True Blood and The Originals, the figure of the vampire embodies taboos and desires about hospitality, rape and consent. The first section welcomes the reader into ominous spaces of home, examining the vampire through concepts of hospitality and power, the metaphor of threshold, and the blurred boundaries between visitation, invasion and confinement. Section two reflects upon the historical development of vampire narratives and the monster as oppressed, alienated Other. Section three discusses cultural anxieties of youth, (im)maturity, childhood agency, abuse and the age of consent. The final section addresses vampire as intimate partner, mapping boundaries between invitation, passion and coercion. With its fresh insight into vampire genre, this book will appeal to academics, students and general public alike.

Contributions by Miranda A. Green-Barteet, Kathleen Kellett, Andrew McInnes, Joyce McPherson, Rebecca Mills, Cristina Rivera, Wendy Rountree, Danielle Russell, Anah-Jayne Samuelson, Sonya Sawyer Fritz, Andrew Trevarrow, and Richardine Woodall Home. School. Nature. The spaces children occupy, both physically and imaginatively, are never neutral. Instead, they carry social, cultural, and political histories that impose-or attempt to impose-behavioral expectations. Moreover, the spaces identified with childhood reflect and reveal adult expectations of where children "belong." The essays in Containing Childhood: Space and Identity in Children's Literature explore the multifaceted and dynamic nature of space, as well as the relationship between space and identity in children's literature. Contributors to the volume address such questions as: What is the nature of that relationship? What happens to the spaces associated with childhood over time? How do children conceptualize and lay claim to their own spaces? The book features essays on popular and lesser-known children's fiction from North America and Great Britain, including works like The Hate U Give, His Dark Materials, The Giver quartet, and Shadowshaper. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach in their analysis, contributors draw upon varied scholarly areas such as philosophy, race, class, and gender studies, among others. Without reducing the issues to any singular theory or perspective, each piece provides insight into specific treatments of space in specific periods of time, thereby affording scholars a greater appreciation of the diverse spatial patterns in children's literature.

The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music Volume 6 is one of five volumes within the 'Locations' strand of the series. This volume discusses the popular music of African and the Middle East 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 John Collins on Ghana, Moya Aliya Malamusi on Malawi, and, Motti Regev on Israel. 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.

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.

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.

This edited collection from leading scholars in the fields of media, communications, cultural studies and a number of aligned areas looks to the intersection of capitalism, crime and the media. The text is founded on the principles of cultural criminology - that how we determine and understand crime lies in the social world and that the determination of crime and its mediation in popular culture have a political basis. The book consists of eleven chapters and is divided into three sections. Section one considers the intersection of crime and capitalism in a range of contemporary cultural texts. Section two examines how various power systems influence the operation of the media in its role of reporting crime and holding the powerful to account. Section three considers how texts in a variety of formats are used to conduct politics, communicate politics and enact political decision making.

Youth Mediations and Affective Relations explores dynamic and expansive possibilities of young people's affective lives as they engage with diverse social media in prolific and specific ways. It addresses the situated embodied and emotional experiences of young people as they actively use media in order to forge communities, play imaginatively, protest injustice, experiment with their identities, make media or explore friendships. Furthermore, it explores the relational and contextual dimensions of their everyday interactions. Against static knowledge and moral panics that abstract youth from the complex and changing worlds in which they grapple with digital media, this book hones in on the layered textures of youth experiences to consider how today's youth think and feel in subtle and unexpected ways.

Performing Music History offers a unique perspective on music history and performance through a series of conversations with women and men intimately associated with music performance, history, and practice: the musicians themselves. Fifty-five celebrated artists-singers, pianists, violinists, cellists, flutists, horn players, oboists, composers, conductors, and jazz greats-provide interviews that encompass most of Western music history, from the Middle Ages to contemporary classical music, avant-garde innovations, and Broadway musicals. The book covers music history through lenses that include "authentic" performance, original instrumentation, and social context. Moreover, the musicians interviewed all bring to bear upon their respective subjects three outstanding qualities: 1) their high esteem in the music world as immediately recognizable names among musicians and public alike; 2) their energy and devotion to scholarship and the recovery of endangered musical heritages; and 3) their considerable skills, media savvy, and showmanship as communicators. Introductory essays to each chapter provide brief synopses of historical eras and topics. Combining careful scholarship and lively conversation, Performing Music History explores historical contexts for a host of fascinating issues.

Across Asia, consumer culture is increasingly shaping everyday life, with neoliberal economic and social policies increasingly adopted by governments who see their citizens as individualised, sovereign consumers with choices about their lifestyles and identities. One aspect of this development has been the emergence of new wealthy middle classes with lifestyle aspirations shaped by national, regional and global media - especially by a range of new popular lifestyle media, which includes magazines, television and mobile and social media. This book explores how far everyday conceptions and experiences of identity are being transformed by media cultures across the region. It considers a range of different media in different Asian contexts, contrasting how the shaping of lifestyles in Asia differs from similar processes in Western countries, and assessing how the new lifestyle media represents not just a new emergent media culture, but also illustrates wider cultural and social changes in the Asian region.

This book examines schoolrooms and their material contents to reveal insights into the evolution of education and the translation of educational theories and cultural ideals into practice. School attendance is nearly universal in our society, yet very little is known about the history of the classrooms we occupy and the objects we encounter and use in our educational lives. Why are our school classrooms designed as they are? When was the blackboard invented? When did computers start appearing in schools? Through analysis of classrooms and objects within them, The Schoolroom: A Social History of Teaching and Learning details the history of American education, describing how architects, in collaboration with educators, have shaped learning spaces in response to curricular and pedagogical changes, population shifts, cultural expectations, and concern for children's health and well-being. It illustrates connections between form and function, showing how a well-designed school building can encourage learning, and reveals little-known histories of ubiquitous educational objects such as blackboards, desks, and computers. Provides an unprecedented history of the classrooms that so many of us occupy during our most formative years Brings readers closer to the design of school buildings Explains how spaces and objects influence teaching and learning and reflect educational ideologies Details how school buildings have evolved over the years

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.

The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music Volume 5 is one of five volumes within the 'Locations' strand of the series. This volume discusses the popular music of Asia and Oceania 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 Toru Mitsui on Japan and Bruce Johnson on Australia. 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.

THE CONTROVERSIAL SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER. Candid, fearless and provocative - the author of American Psycho on who he is and what he thinks is wrong with the world today. Bret Easton Ellis is most famous for his era-defining novel American Psycho and its terrifying anti-hero, Patrick Bateman. With that book, and many times since, Ellis proved himself to be one of the world's most fearless and clear-sighted observers of society - the glittering surface and the darkness beneath. In White, his first work of non-fiction, Ellis offers a wide-ranging exploration of what the hell is going on right now. He tells personal stories from his own life. He writes with razor-sharp precision about the music, movies, books and TV he loves and hates. He examines the ways our culture, politics and relationships have changed over the last four decades. He talks about social media, Hollywood celebrities and Donald Trump. Ellis considers conflicting positions without flinching and adheres to no status quo. His forthright views are powered by a fervent belief in artistic freedom and freedom of speech. Candid, funny, entertaining and blisteringly honest, he offers opinions that are impossible to ignore and certain to provoke. What he values above all is the truth. 'The culture at large seemed to encourage discourse,' he writes, 'but what it really wanted to do was shut down the individual.' Bret Easton Ellis will not be shut down.

This book, a collection of essays by expert film researchers and lecturers, contributes to the growing body of scholarship on cinematic cities by looking at how one city-London-has been represented on film. In particular, the collection examines how films about London have responded to social, material and political change in the city, either by capturing and so influencing how we think about London, or by acting as catalysts (intentionally or otherwise) for public debate. Individual essays explore films ranging from the earliest actualities of the late nineteenth century to contemporary blockbusters. The book will appeal to film scholars and students, as well as to readers interested in the history of London and its changing image.

Football has emerged as an important symbolic field through which various social, cultural, political, economic, and historical dimensions and antagonisms are negotiated. This volume covers a variety of themes illuminating the multiple ways that football impacts on people's everyday lives. Using anthropological research methods and data collected from ethnographic fieldwork, the contributors scrutinize not only the social fields of football fans and the specific socio-cultural contexts in which they are embedded, but also other actors beyond the pitch, and the possibilities for both agency and subversion. Taking into account processes of Europeanization, globalization, commercialization and migration, the collection offers fresh insights into fan identity formations and practices and highlights the importance of anthropology's self-reflexive and actor-centred perspective.

As with all other forms of popular culture, comics in East Germany were tightly controlled by the state. Comics were employed as extensions of the regime's educational system, delivering official ideology so as to develop the "socialist personality" of young people and generate enthusiasm for state socialism. The East German children who avidly read these comics, however, found their own meanings in and projected their own desires upon them. Four-Color Communism gives a lively account of East German comics from both perspectives, showing how the perceived freedoms they embodied created expectations that ultimately limited the regime's efforts to bring readers into the fold.

This book examines why thousands of cinemas opened in Britain in the space of a few years before the start of the First World War. It explains how they were the product of an investment boom which observers characterised as economically irrational and irresponsible. Burrows profiles the main groups of people who started cinema companies during this period, and those who bought shares in them, and considers whether the early cinema business might be seen as a bubble that burst. The book examines the impact of the Cinematograph Act 1909 upon the boom, and explains why British film production seemed to decline in inverse proportion to the mass expansion of the market for moving image entertainment. This account also takes a new look at the development of film distribution, the emergence of the feature film and the creation of the British Board of Film Censors. Making systematic and pioneering use of surviving business and local government records, this book will appeal to anyone interested in silent cinema, the history of film exhibition and the economics of popular culture.

Robots in Popular Culture: Androids and Cyborgs in the American Imagination seeks to provide one go-to reference for the study of the most popular and iconic robots in American popular culture. In the last 10 years, technology and artificial intelligence (AI) have become not only a daily but a minute-by-minute part of American life-more integrated into our lives than anyone would have believed even a generation before. Americans have long known the adorable and helpful R2-D2 and the terrible possibilities of Skynet and its army of Terminators. Throughout, we have seen machines as valuable allies and horrifying enemies. Today, Americans cling to their mobile phones with the same affection that Luke Skywalker felt for the squat R2-D2. Meanwhile, our phones, personal computers, and cars have attained the ability to know and learn everything about us. This volume opens with essays about robots in popular culture, followed by 100 A-Z entries on the most famous AIs in film, comics, and more. Sidebars highlight ancillary points of interest, such as authors, creators, and tropes that illuminate the motives of various robots. The volume closes with a glossary of key terms and a bibliography providing students with resources to continue their study of what robots tell us about ourselves. Provides readers with detailed information on popular examples of robots/AI in American popular culture Provides readers with considerable Further Reading suggestions, including scholarly, pop culture, and scientific readings on each topic Places popular examples of robots/AI in pop culture in proper historical perspective Provides scholarly material that gives readers additional important historical context in five essays Gives equal coverage to a diverse array of robots, from the well-known to the obscure

This book argues that cultural fascination with the "madperson" stems from the contemporaneous increase of chronically mentally ill persons in public life due to deinstitutionalization-the mental health reform movement leading to the closure of many asylums in favor of outpatient care. Anthony Carlton Cooke explores the reciprocal spheres of influence between deinstitutionalization, representations of the "murderous, mentally ill individual" in the horror, crime, and thriller genres, and the growth of public associations of violent crime with mental illness.

The Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) in Asia Minor and the Population Exchange that followed led to the forced displacement of more than 1.5 million people who became entangled in the nation-building processes of both Greece and Turkey. This book examines the memories that shaped Asia Minor refugee identity, focusing on the ways in which these memories continue to reverberate in contemporary Greek culture. It explores how memories of Asia Minor frame wider social debates, foster affective alliances, inform different notions of belonging and provide a toolkit for addressing contemporary concerns. Taking the reader across a wide range of cultural works-history textbooks, comics, theatre, documentary and fiction films, news footage and photography-the book shows how these works have become means for individuals and communities to contribute to the process of history-making. While keeping its focus on present-day Greece, Memories of Asia Minor joins wider global debates over contested pasts, legacies of war and refugeehood.

The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music Volume 4 is one of five volumes within the 'Locations' strand of the series. This volume discusses the popular music of North America 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 90 entries written by more than 60 leading popular music scholars and practitioners, including Richard Peterson on Nashville, Amy Ku'uleialoha Stillman on Hawai'I, and David Laing on Los Angeles. 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.

Dark novels, shows, and films targeted toward children and young adults are proliferating wildly. It is even more crucial now to understand the methods by which such texts have traditionally operated and how those methods have been challenged, abandoned, and appropriated. Reading in the Dark fills a gap in criticism devoted to children's popular culture by concentrating on horror, an often-neglected genre. These scholars explore the intersection between horror, popular culture, and children's cultural productions, including picture books, fairy tales, young adult literature, television, and monster movies. Reading in the Dark looks at horror texts for children with deserved respect, weighing the multitude of benefits they can provide for young readers and viewers. Refusing to write off the horror genre as campy, trite, or deforming, these essays instead recognize many of the texts and films categorized as ""scary"" as among those most widely consumed by children and young adults. In addition, scholars consider how adult horror has been domesticated by children's literature and culture, with authors and screenwriters turning that which was once horrifying into safe, funny, and delightful books and films. Scholars likewise examine the impetus behind such re-envisioning of the adult horror novel or film as something appropriate for the young. The collection investigates both the constructive and the troublesome aspects of scary books, movies, and television shows targeted toward children and young adults. It considers the complex mechanisms by which these texts communicate overt messages and hidden agendas, and it treats as well the readers' experiences of such mechanisms.

U2's success and significance are due, in large part, to finding inventive, creative solutions for overcoming obstacles and moving past conventional boundaries. As it has embraced change and transformation over and over again, its fans and critics have come to value and expect this element of U2. These new essays from the disciplines of organizational communication, music theory, literary studies, religion, and cultural studies offer perspectives on several ways U2's dynamic of change has been a constant theme throughout its career. The eight essays here come from the U2 Conference 2013, which explores the music, work, and influence of U2, furthering the scholarship on U2.