This book provides detailed insights into how space and popular culture intersect across a broad spectrum of examples, including cinema, music, art, arcade games, cartoons, comics, and advertisements. This is a pertinent topic since the use of space themes differs in different cultural contexts, and these themes can be used to explore various aspects of the human condition and provide a context for social commentary on politically sensitive issues. With the use of space imagery evolving over the past sixty years of the space age, this is a topic ripe for in-depth exploration. The book also discusses the contrasting visions of space from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the reality of today, and analyzes space vehicles and habitats in popular depictions of space from an engineering perspective, exploring how many of those ideas have actually been implemented in practice, and why or why not (a case of life imitating art and vice versa). As such, it covers a wide array of relevant and timely topics examining intersections between space and popular culture, and offering accounts of space and its effect on culture, language, and storytelling from the southern regions of the world.

The contemporary American South is a region of economic expansion, political sophistication, and, particularly, cultural ferment. Its literature is well-known and celebrated. But what of the popular cultural forms of expression that have done so much to reflect the curious tensions between the traditional South--white-dominated, rural, religous--and contemporary multicultural forms and discourses?

This collection offers a wealth of exciting new perspectives on cultural studies in general and of the particular forms of popular Southern culture--from rock and roll to Cajun music to the impact on the South of tourism and the questions of genre and race in contemporary film-making.

The Afterlife in Popular Culture: Heaven, Hell, and the Underworld in the American Imagination gives students a fresh look at how Americans view the afterlife, helping readers understand how it's depicted in popular culture. What happens to us when we die? The book seeks to explore how that question has been answered in American popular culture. It begins with five framing essays that provide historical and intellectual background on ideas about the afterlife in Western culture. These essays are followed by more than 100 entries, each focusing on specific cultural products or authors that feature the afterlife front and center. Entry topics include novels, film, television shows, plays, works of nonfiction, graphic novels, and more, all of which address some aspect of what may await us after our passing. This book is unique in marrying a historical overview of the afterlife with detailed analyses of particular cultural products, such as films and novels. In addition, it covers these topics in nonspecialist language, written with a student audience in mind. The book provides historical context for contemporary depictions of the afterlife addressed in the entries, which deal specifically with work produced in the 20th and 21st centuries. Provides readers with an encyclopedic treatment of the afterlife in American popular culture, without any religious or moral biases Connects depictions of the afterlife with general social trends Contests the idea that Americans fear death by showing the plethora of examples of the afterlife shown in film, television, and more Presents a serious analysis of vampires, zombies, and other fictional archetypes without becoming hyper-academic or humorous

Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince remains an influential book more than five centuries after he wrote his timeless classic. However, the political philosophy expressed by Machiavelli in his tome is often misunderstood. Although he thought humans to be rational, self-interested creatures, and even though he proposed an approach to politics in which the ends justify the means, Machiavelli was not, as some have argued, simply "a teacher of evil." The Prince's many ancient and medieval examples, while relevant to sixteenth century readers, are lost on most of today's students of Machiavelli. Examples from modern films and television programs, which are more familiar and understandable to contemporary readers, provide a better way to accurately teach Machiavelli's lessons. Indeed, modern media, such as Breaking Bad, The Godfather, The Walking Dead, Charlie Wilson's War, House of Cards, Argo, and The Departed, are replete with illustrations that teach Machiavelli's critical principles, including the need to caress or annihilate, learning "how not to be good," why it is better to be feared than loved, and how to act as both the lion and the fox. Modern media are used in this book to exemplify the tactics Machiavelli advocated and to comprehensively demonstrate that Machiavelli intended for government actors and those exercising power in other contexts to fight for a greater good and strive to achieve glory.

Fashion in Fiction examines the ways in which dress 'performs' in a wide range of contemporary and historical literary texts. Essays by North American, European and Australian scholars explore the function of clothing within fictional narratives, including those of film, television and advertising. The book provides a groundbreaking examination of the interconnected worlds of fashion and words, providing perspectives from socio-cultural, historical and theoretical readings of fashion and text-based communication. Covering a variety of genres and periods, Fashion in Fiction analyses fashion's role within a range of creative media, exploring the many ways that dress communicates, disrupts and modulates meaning across different cultures and contexts.

James Fitch shows how American architecture displays qualities which can safely be described as typically American. There are many areas in which our architecture is distinguishable from that of the rest of the world. The single family house, for example, shares with its foreign contemporaries the basic elements of plan, and yet the way in which these elements are organized into a whole gives our houses certain qualities which we can call uniquely American.

The Culture and Philosophy of Ridley Scott, edited by Adam Barkman, Ashley Barkman, and Nancy Kang, brings together eighteen critical essays that illuminate a nearly comprehensive selection of the director's feature films from cutting-edge multidisciplinary and comparative perspectives. Chapters examine such signature works as Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Thelma and Louise (1991), Gladiator (2000), Hannibal (2001), Black Hawk Down (2001), and American Gangster (2007). This volume divides the chapters into three major thematic groups: responsibility, remembering, and revision; real, alienated, and ideal lives; and gender, identity, and selfhood. Each section features six discrete essays, each of which forwards an original thesis about the film or films chosen for analysis. Each chapter features close readings of scenes as well as broader discussions that will interest academics, non-specialists, as well as educated readers with an interest in films as visual texts. While recognizing Scott's undeniable contributions to contemporary popular cinema, the volume does not shy away from honest and well-evidenced critique. Each chapter's approach correlates with philosophical, literary, or cultural studies perspectives. Using both combined and single-film discussions, the contributors examine such topics as gender roles and feminist theory; philosophical abstractions like ethics, honor, and personal responsibility; historical memory and the challenges of accurately rendering historical events on screen; literary archetypes and generic conventions; race relations and the effect of class difference on character construction; how religion shapes personal and collective values; the role of a constantly changing technological universe; and the schism between individual and group-based power structures. The Culture and Philosophy of Ridley Scott assembles the critical essays of scholars working in the fields of philosophy, literary studies, and cultural studies. An international group, they are based in the United States, Canada, Argentina, Italy, Greece, Korea, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. The guiding assumption on the part of all the writers is that the filmmaker is the leading determiner of a motion picture's ethos, artistic vision, and potential for audience engagement. While not discounting the production team (including screenwriters, actors, and cinematographers, among others), auteur theory recognizes the seminal role of the director as the nucleus of the meaning-making process. With Scott an active and prolific presence in the entertainment industry today, the timeliness of this volume is optimal.

Contributions by Apryl Alexander, Alisia Grace Chase, Brian Faucette, Laura E. Felschow, Lindsay Hallam, Rusty Hatchell, Dru Jeffries, Henry Jenkins, Jeffrey SJ Kirchoff, Curtis Marez, James Denis McGlynn, Brandy Monk-Payton, Chamara Moore, Drew Morton, Mark C. E. Peterson, Jayson Quearry, Zachary J. A. Rondinelli, Suzanne Scott, David Stanley, Sarah Pawlak Stanley, Tracy Vozar, and Chris Yogerst Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen fundamentally altered the perception of American comic books and remains one of the medium's greatest hits. Launched in 1986-"the year that changed comics" for most scholars in comics studies-Watchmen quickly assisted in cementing the legacy that comics were a serious form of literature no longer defined by the Comics Code era of funny animal and innocuous superhero books that appealed mainly to children. After Midnight: "Watchmen" after "Watchmen" looks specifically at the three adaptations of Moore's and Gibbons's Watchmen-Zack Snyder's Watchmen film (2009), Geoff Johns's comic book sequel Doomsday Clock (2017), and Damon Lindelof's Watchmen series on HBO (2019). Divided into three parts, the anthology considers how the sequels, especially the limited series, have prompted a reevaluation of the original text and successfully harnessed the politics of the contemporary moment into a potent relevancy. The first part considers the various texts through conceptions of adaptation, remediation, and transmedia storytelling. Part two considers the HBO series through its thematic focus on the relationship between American history and African American trauma by analyzing how the show critiques the alt-right, represents intergenerational trauma, illustrates alternative possibilities for Black representation, and complicates our understanding of how the mechanics of the show's production can complicate its politics. Finally, the book's last section considers the themes of nostalgia and trauma, both firmly rooted in the original Moore and Gibbons series, and how the sequel texts reflect and refract upon those often-intertwined phenomena.

In the broad spectrum of popular culture, one can be a fan of just about anything: comic books, television shows, fantasy novels, movie franchises, musical artists, and so on. Because fans are fluid and ever-changing, however, defining them poses a challenge. As a result, too few scholars have yet to focus on the impact of gender in media consumption, leading to a limited portrait of what male and female fans look for. In Fan Girls and the Media: Creating Characters, Consuming Culture, Adrienne Trier-Bieniek has assembled a collection of essays that demonstrate the gendered aspect of fandom and explore the ways different forms of media challenge stereotypical ideals of how culture is consumed. Contributors examine a wide range of fan issues-from gendered stereotypes in the Star Trek and Twilight franchises to gender roles in Tyler Perry films and The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Other essays look at the female comedy fan community, the appeal of avenging-woman characters written by men, and the use of social media by women in the video-game culture. This collection describes how gender is present in fandom, demonstrating the need to combat the marginalization of female identities in various cultural outlets. Fan Girls and the Media will be of interest to anyone studying fandom but also students and scholars of sociology, media, and gender studies.

This book examines the post-1960s era of popular music in the Anglo-Black Atlantic through the prism of historical theory and methods. By using a series of case studies, this book mobilizes historical theory and methods to underline different expressions of alternative music functioning within a mainstream musical industry. Each chapter highlights a particular theory or method while simultaneously weaving it through a genre of music expressing a notion of alternativity-an explicit positioning of one's expression outside and counter to the mainstream. Historical Theory and Methods through Popular Music seeks to fill a gap in current scholarship by offering a collection written specifically for the pedagogical and theoretical needs of those interested in the topic.

This book uncovers how music experience-live and recorded-is changing along with the use of digital technology in the 2000s. Focussing on the Nordic region, this volume utilizes the theory of mentalization: the capacity to perceive and interpret what others are thinking and feeling, and applies it to the analysis of mediated forms of agency in popular music. The rise of new media in music production has enabled sound recording and processing to occur more rapidly and in more places, including the live concert stage. Digital technology has also introduced new distribution and consumption technologies that allow record listening to be more closely linked to the live music experience. The use of digital technology has therefore facilitated an expanding range of activities and experiences with music. Here, Yngvar Kjus addresses a topic that has a truly global reach that is of interest to scholars of musicology, media studies and technology studies.

This book explores the monstrous-feminine in Japanese popular culture, produced from the late years of the 1980s through to the new millennium. Raechel Dumas examines the role of female monsters in selected works of fiction, manga, film, and video games, offering a trans-genre, trans-media analysis of this enduring trope. The book focuses on several iterations of the monstrous-feminine in contemporary Japan: the self-replicating shojo in horror, monstrous mothers in science fiction, female ghosts and suburban hauntings in cinema, female monsters and public violence in survival horror games, and the rebellious female body in mytho-fiction. Situating the titles examined here amid discourses of crisis that have materialized in contemporary Japan, Dumas illuminates the ambivalent pleasure of the monstrous-feminine as a trope that both articulates anxieties centered on shifting configurations of subjectivity and nationhood, and elaborates novel possibilities for identity negotiation and social formation in a period marked by dramatic change.

McAdams provides the first extensive synthesis of American and world history with the war film genre. He demonstrates how the war film reflects the currents of history of the time with actual events portrayed and in dramatic plot points.

Beginning with DEGREESIThe Birth of a Nation DEGREESR in 1915, McAdams weaves the development of Hollywood, the larger socioeconomic and political events of the time with the way war was and is portrayed in American film. In wartime he shows the struggle between propaganda and patriotism on the one side and the desire of many directors and film people to portray war as they came to know it on the other. He concludes with DEGREESIPearl Harbor DEGREESR and Hollywood's search for historical film blockbusters. A fascinating survey for film and American military history scholars and students as well as the general public interested in American film in context.

This collection focuses on the multi-layered links between international events and identity discourses. With a unique line-up of international scholars, this book offers a diverse range of exciting case studies, including sports competitions, music festivals, exhibitions, fashion shows and royal celebrations.

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.

Global Movements: Dance, Place, and Hybridity provides a theoretical and practical examination of the relationships between the global mobility of ideas and people, and its impact on dance and space. Using seven case studies, the contributors illustrate the mixture of dance styles that result from the global diffusion of cultural traditions and practices. The collection portrays a multitude of ways in which public and private spaces-stages, buildings, town squares as well as natural environments-are transformed and made meaningful by culturally diverse dances. Global Movements will be of interest to scholars of geography, dance, and global issues.

American football and postmodernist theory are both objects of popular and scholarly interest that reveal remarkable sociological insights. Analysis of media-driven commercial football documents how narratives of sportsmanship/brutality, heroism/antiheroism, athleticism/self-indulgence, honor/chicanery, and chivalry/sexism compete and thrive.

This collection is a selection of comic items from almanacs published between 1776 and 1800. Dodge uses his smooth, astute writing style to unfold the humor in a section of American Heritage. The eight chapters are categorized by subject, including "Comic American Heroes," "The Tall Tale," and "Men, Women, Marriage, and Sex."

When Mona Lisa smiled enigmatically from the cover of the Italian magazine Epoca in 1957, she gazed out at more than three million readers. As Emma Barron argues, her appearance on the cover is emblematic of the distinctive ways that high culture was integrated into Italy's mass culture boom in the 1950s and 1960s, a period when popular appropriations of literature, fine art and music became a part of the rapidly changing modern Italian identity. Popular magazines ran weekly illustrated adaptations of literary classics. Television brought opera from the opera house into the homes of millions. Readers wrote to intellectuals and artists such as Alberto Moravia, Thomas Mann and Salvatore Quasimodo by the thousands with questions about literature and self-education. Drawing upon new archival material on the demographics of television audiences and magazine readers, this book is an engaging account of how the Italian people took possession of high culture and transformed the modern Italian identity.

This history of the punk movement in the United States shows how punk music, fashion, art, and attitude clashed with and ultimately influenced mainstream culture. Unlike other volumes on the punk era that focus on just the music-and primarily on British punk bands-Punks: A Guide to an American Subculture spans the full expanse of punk as it happened in the United States, from the late-1960s blast from Iggy Pop and the Stooges to the full explosion of punk in the mid 1970s to its next-generation resurgences and continuing aftershocks. Punks covers it all-not just music, but the punk influence on film, fashion, media, and language. Readers will see how punk spread virally, through fan-created magazines, record labels, clubs, and radio stations, as well as how mainstream America reacted, then absorbed aspects of punk culture. The book includes interviews with key members of the punk subculture, including new conversations with people who participated in the punk scene in the 1970s and 1980s. Includes new interviews with Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson, founders of Dischord Records and the punk band Minor Threat, plus reprints of interviews with singers Jello Biafra and Kathleen Hanna, two well-known punks who spoke out frequently about politics and gender issues Offers an annotated bibliography, including a variety of entries that are both scholarly and popular, grouped by format

This book focuses on New York City-based actors and comedians who are self-acknowledged heroin users. Barry Spunt examines a number of hypotheses about the reasons why actors and comedians use heroin as well as the impact of heroin on performance, creativity, and career trajectory. A primary concern of the book is the role that subculture and identity play in helping us to understand the heroin use of these entertainers. Spunt captures the voices of actors and comedians through narrative accounts from a variety of secondary sources. He also examines how New York-based films about heroin relate to the major themes of his research.

As we withdraw farther from American canonical literature and poetry and move closer to a re-appraisal of literature's impact upon the arts through media, we may easily find a match for greater humanism and popular interaction in American rock culture through Paul Bowles. In this work, Bowles is re-invented within the postmodern, the postcolonial, and the renegade future underscored by liberal elites that had breathed new life into the American counterculture. Re-Creating Paul Bowles attests to the moments of relentless humanism and imaginative transformation that are most dreamlike, engaging the antagonism of psychology with imperialism at last. In his youth a classical composer and critic, Bowles deserves credit for spawning new generations of rock and pop music through his use of sound and tapping of non-Western or non-European folk music, bringing classic ethnography to the rock generation with Music of Morocco. Re-Creating Paul Bowles examines the Latin American, American, African, and Arab moments of his scholastic effort, a primary beginning for understanding modern popular music's free transcription of tradition. Re-Creating Paul Bowles includes several examples of films that adapt the author's personal life and times, the production of surrealist technique in film and literature, and the re-invention of classic works such as The Sheltering Sky and Collected Stories. It assumes the technique for re-production allows the elder Bowles greater freedom in crossing cultural boundaries and overruling the colonialist separateness that guarded cultural content for centuries. Bowles has always deserved re-appraisal in the American academy-and liberation from his stereotypical cult figure identity, a positive force in the ethnic comprehension of Self and society.