A pathbreaking study of the women who create electronic dance music, "Beyond the Dance Floor" focuses on the largely neglected relationship between these women and the conceptions of gender and technology that continue to inform the male-dominated culture surrounding electronic music. In this volume, Rebekah Farrugia explores a number of important issues, including the politics of identity and representation, the bonds formed by women within the DJ community, and the role female DJs and producers play in this dance music culture as well as in the larger public sphere. Though Farrugia primarily focuses on women's relationship to music-related technologies--including vinyl, mp3s, and digital production software--she also deftly extends her argument to the strategic use of the Internet and web design skills for purposes tied to publicity, networking, and music distribution.

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This groundbreaking collection reframes how popular culture in Ireland and Ireland in popular culture can be understood. The essays examine in unique ways, local and global Irishness, focusing on current versions of traditional culture and new modes of representation, how issues such as gender, sexuality, and race shape contemporary postmodernism in Ireland. From Fanfic to Orange Parades, from Boybands to the Blessed Virgin Mary, from Celebrity Tourism to the Gaelic Athletic Association, the essays address new territories.

The product of a unique collaboration between a literary critic (Van Delden) and a political scientist (Grenier), this book looks at the relationship between literature and politics in Latin America, a region where these two domains exist in closer proximity than perhaps anywhere else in the Western world. The apparently seamless blending of literature and politics is reflected in the explicitly political content of much of the continent's writing, as well as in the highly visible political roles played by many Latin American intellectuals.

Yet the authors of this book argue that the relationship between the two realms is much more complex and fraught with tension than is nowadays recognized. In examining these tensions, and in revealing the diverse ways in which literature and politics intersect in the Latin American cultural tradition, Gunshots at the Fiesta offers a lively challenge to the current tendency--especially strong in the U.S. academy--to read Latin American literature through a narrowly political prism.

The authors argue that one can only understand the nature of the dialogue between literature and politics if one begins by recognizing the different logics that operate in these different domains. Using this idea of the different logics of politics and literature as a guiding thread, Van Delden and Grenier offer bold new readings of major authors such as Jose Marti, Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa, as well as compelling interpretations of works by less-frequently-discussed figures such as Claribel Alegria, Marisol Martin del Campo and Victor Hugo Rascon Banda."

Myra S. Washington probes the social construction of race through the mixed-race identity of Blasians, people of Black and Asian ancestry. She looks at the construction of the identifier Blasian and how this term went from being undefined to forming a significant role in popular media. Today Blasian has emerged as not just an identity Black/Asian mixed-race people can claim, but also a popular brand within the industry and a signifier in the culture at large. Washington tracks the transformation of Blasian from being an unmentioned category to a recognized status applied to other Blasian figures in media. Blasians have been neglected as a meaningful category of people in research, despite an extensive history of Black and Asian interactions within the United States and abroad. Washington explains that even though Americans have mixed in every way possible, racial mixing is framed in certain ways, which almost always seem to involve Whiteness. Unsurprisingly, media discourses about Blasians mostly conform to usual scripts already created, reproduced, and familiar to audiences about monoracial Blacks and Asians. In the first book on this subject, Washington regards Blasians as belonging to more than one community, given their multiple histories and experiences. Moving beyond dominant rhetoric, she does not harp on defining or categorizing mixed race, but instead recognizes the multiplicities of Blasians and the process by which they obtain meaning. Washington uses celebrities, including Kimora Lee, Dwayne Johnson, Hines Ward, and Tiger Woods, to highlight how they challenge and destabilize current racial debate, create spaces for themselves, and change the narratives that frame multiracial people. Finally, Washington asserts Blasians as not only evidence for the fluidity of identities, but also for the limitations of reductive racial binaries.

Regarding the Popular charts the complex relationship between the avant-gardes and modernisms on the one hand and popular culture on the other. Covering (neo-)avant-gardists and modernists from various European countries, this second volume in the series European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies explores the nature of so-called "low" culture, dealing with aspects as diverse as the everyday and the folkloric. Regarding the Popular charts the many ways in which the allegedly "high" modernists and avant-gardists looked at and represented the "low". As such, this book will appeal to all those with an interest in the dynamic of modern experimental arts and literatures.

New media, especially in relation to video gaming, now occupies a dominant position within popular culture. The book offers new and critical perspectives on computer game culture. It illustrates key debates in game studies and is a guide to complexity and diversity of the phenomenon.It maintains its originality in bringing together international experts from among social scientists, game designers, artists and literature scholars. Internationally renowned media and literature scholars, social scientists, game designers and artists explore the cultural potential of computer games in this rich anthology, which introduces the latest approaches in the central fields of game studies and provides an extensive survey of contemporary game culture.

This book analyses the portrayals of the Holocaust in newspaper cartoons, educational pamphlets, short stories and graphic novels. Focusing on recognised and lesser-known illustrators from Europe and beyond, the volume looks at autobiographical and fictional accounts and seeks to paint a broader picture of Holocaust comic strips from the 1940s to the present. The book shows that the genre is a capacious one, not only dealing with the killing of millions of Jews but also with Jewish lives in war-torn Europe, the personal and transgenerational memory of the Second World War and the wider national and transnational legacies of the Shoah. The chapters in this collection point to the aesthetic diversity of the genre which uses figurative and allegorical representation, as well as applying different stylistics, from realism to fantasy. Finally, the contributions to this volume show new developments in comic books and graphic novels on the Holocaust, including the rise of alternative publications, aimed at the adult reader, and the emergence of state-funded educational comics written with young readers in mind. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies.

Rough Trade's Book of the Year Electronic Sound Magazine's Book of the Year Mute Records is one of the most revered and influential independent music labels of all time. Through the music of its tight-knit community of artists - ranging from Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, Nick Cave's The Birthday Party and Einsturzende Neubauten to Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Erasure, Laibach and Goldfrapp - it has had an incalculable impact on popular music for forty years. This authoritative, sumptuously illustrated history of the label features stunning artwork and photography - much of it previously unseen - and insights from those who have worked with the label. Text contributions from key players, together with ground-breaking shots and video stills from lengendary photographers, make this book the definitive chronicle of the iconic label, which today has offices in the USA, UK, Germany and France and an unparalleled reputation worldwide.

This volume explores the panic that is a central affective register of our current international order. Fears of Somali pirates, "Gypsy" kidnappers, African warlords, Ebola, "Mexican meth," pimps, coyotes, gangs, climate refugees and more, structure the dark side of a metropolitan unconscious. These are terrors over things that (might) cross borders, threatening the sanctity of territoriality and capital. Inspired by scholarship challenging panics around human and sex trafficking, the contributors to this volume develop the umbrella category of the global moral panic. Embracing the challenge of grasping a phenomenon not previously regarded as cohering, they consider panics provoked by travel, passage, transgression; panics over bodies that move. Like panics over trafficking, the episodes narrated here ride and feed a field of common sense regarding crime, rights, and state power. Their logics of victims and villains nourish notions of the centrality of punishment, drawing from and feeding taxonomies of gender, race, and nation, solidifying the order craved by capital. They spotlight the coloniality of power, the ongoing salience of empire, the savior logics of rescue, and the profound sexism organizing hierarchies of bodies and places. Panic, this volume diagnoses, is a crucial, undertheorized facet of contemporary local-global relations.

This meticulous biography traces Tolkien's life from his boyhood in South Africa to his formative school years in England, his college years at Oxford, and his career as an influential scholar and revolutionary writer. His immensely popular books are discussed in great detail, from their inception as ideas through their publication and remarkable legacy. This biography will appeal to students who are fans of Tolkien's books, as well as those who are new to the world of Middle Earth. Included are an extensive bibliography of poems, fiction, and scholarly work written by Tolkien, and a further reading section listing important biographies, letter collections, and critical studies of Tolkien's works. A timeline provides the reader with a comprehensive list of the events of his life and career.

Tolkien's outer life was relatively calm, yet his scholarship and stories are remembered as one of the 20th century's most astonishing achievements. First as a student at Oxford University, then as a professor, Tolkien was fascinated with languages and philology and used the worlds he studied to shape the one he was creating. After years of nominal success, "The Hobbit" and the "Lord of the RingS" erupted into popularity, bringing fantasy fiction to the forefront of popular culture in America, and ultimately the world.

The Beverly Hillbillies includes the portrayal of rich versus poor, the American dream, wealth, and social mobility in popular culture. The Hillbillies was a phenomenon of post-World War II America, the second wave after the 1950s, the dustbelt Depression meets the promise of opportunity achieved through luck. Luck counts in liberal society. It is, said Machiavelli, "the arbiter of half of what we do." But is success based on luck really the American dream? And who is the bigger success story-the Hillbillies or those who have earned their wealth? Whom do we want to be or be like? Everyone wants to win the lottery, but is everyone willing to do what it takes to achieve financial independence without winning the lottery? Does winning the lottery bring social status or can it only be achieved by labor? In sum, Paul Henning's brilliant comedy series The Beverly Hillbillies is replete with political ideas and has come to occupy a special place in popular culture as a classic television icon because of its deeper meaning and relationship to how we think about wealth, status, social mobility and the American dream.

Children have been exploited as performers and wooed energetically as consumers throughout history. These essays offer scholarly investigations into the employment and participation of children in the entertainment industry with examples drawn from historical and contemporary contexts.

Saturday Night Live, Hollywood Comedy, and American Culture sheds new light on the ways in which Saturday Night Live's confrontational, boundary-pushing approach spilled over into film production, contributing to some of the biggest hits in Hollywood history, such as National Lampoon's Animal House, Ghostbusters, and Beverly Hills Cop. Jim Whalley also considers how SNL has adapted to meet the needs of subsequent generations, launching the film careers of Mike Myers, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell and others in the process. Supported by extensive archival research, some of Hollywood's most popular comedians are placed into the contexts of film and television comic traditions and social and cultural trends in American life.

Reading Contemporary Serial Television Universes provides a new framework-the metaphor of the narrative ecosystem-for the analysis of serial television narratives. Contributors use this metaphor to address the ever-expanding and evolving structure of narratives far beyond their usual spatial and temporal borders, in general and in reference to specific series. Other scholarly approaches consider each narrative as composed of modular elements, which combine to create a bigger picture. The narrative ecosystem approach, on the other hand, argues that each portion of the narrative world contains all of the main elements that characterize the world as a whole, such as narrative tensions, production structures, creative dynamics and functions. The volume details the implications of the narrative ecosystem for narrative theory and the study of seriality, audiences and fandoms, production, and the analysis of the products themselves.

This study of the Native American in the western, romance, detective, horror, and science fiction genres examines how even historically accurate representations distort and bias the Native American figure to fit European-based traditions and modern agendas. The authors provide critical approaches for evaluating the literature. They argue that while popular fiction conventions determine and limit authentic portraits of Native American cultures, successful popular fiction writers approach literary quality by fusing authentic Native American culture with the standard genre conventions. Approximately 200 books are discussed and evaluated, and true Native American stories and writings are contrasted with mainstream versions of Indian culture.

While the exploitation of Native Americans has long been recognized, little has been written about the manipulation of Native American figures in recent popular fiction. This study will appeal to students of Native American culture, literature, and popular culture. An appendix of special terms is provided along with a comprehensive bibliography.

aOne of the best aspects of the text is the way that the contributors do not merely typecast fans as those interested in modern and popular culture, but also examine fans of mediums typically considered ahigh culture.a This makes the book much friendlier to pop-culture fans, whose practices are typically considered low-brow and fanatical when compared to someone who holds season tickets to the opera or visits an art gallery every weekend. As a fan, itas nice to see that the behavior is not reduced to unnecessary fanaticism and is examined on a more subjective level.a
--"M/C Reviews"

"Fandom pushes the boundaries of fan studies in bold directions, incorporating high culture fandoms, global fan cultures, fan technologies, and antagonistic anti-fandom, while rethinking the core tenets of fan studies concerning aesthetics, place, intellectual property, and interpretive communities -- all presented with a lively, accessible, and engaging writing style."
--Jason Mittell, Middlebury College

aIf you're an avid news reader, a holder of season's tickets to the symphony, a frequenter of used bookstores, or even if you've been known to scream at referees during televised games, you're a fan. In this exciting collection, we learn about why it is that certain media narratives, images, sounds, and events engage us emotionally, and what that engagement means for us personally and in our relationships with others in the increasingly global marketplace in which we live.a
--Lynn Schofield Clark, author of" From Angels to Aliens"

aA rich compendium of theory, argument, and observation of a wide variety of types of fandomafrom fans of cultural theory to fans of the Sopranos and ofChekhov, from presidents who are fans of country music to fans of the news. As the active aprosumersa of the digital mediaas niche markets come to be increasingly central to their operation, fan studies shows us the emerging dynamics of how the cultural industries are going to work in the future.a
--David Morley, Goldsmiths College, University of London

We are all fans. Whether we log on to Web sites to scrutinize the latest plot turns in "Lost," "stalk" our favorite celebrities on "Gawker," attend gaming conventions, or simply wait with bated breath for the newest "Harry Potter" novel-each of us is a fan. Fandom extends beyond television and film to literature, opera, sports, and pop music, and encompasses both high and low culture.

Fandom brings together leading scholars to examine fans, their practices, and their favorite texts. This unparalleled selection of original essays examines instances across the spectrum of modern cultural consumption from Karl Marx to Paris Hilton, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" to backyard wrestling, Bach fugues to Bollywood cinemaA, and nineteenth-century concert halls to computer gaming. Contributors examine fans of high cultural texts and genres, the spaces of fandom, fandom around the globe, the impact of new technologies on fandom, and the legal and historical contexts of fan activity. Fandom is key to understanding modern life in our increasingly mediated and globalized world.

Despite its apparently monolithic definition, "teratology" (from the Greek word teras, meaning "monster," and the Latin logia, which is derived from the Greek logos, meaning "a speaking, discourse, treatise, doctrine, theory, science") seems infinitely malleable, flourishing in various rhetorical environments. Teratologies are more than a bestiary: a catalogue of "freaks" designed to celebrate the "normal." Rather, teratologies illustrate how humor, horror, fantasy, and the "real" cross-fertilize each other, resulting in the possibility of new worlds, ethics, and narratives emerging. As a general anthology of teratologies, this book simply maps what, in many ways, has already been occurring across several fields, as it tracks the expansion of this term, creating lacunae that form connections across multiple interpretive communities. It is a cross section of how "monster narratives" intersect with "outsider" positions, from different perspectives - such as those of literary critics, film critics, criminologists, law professors, historians, philosophers - and looks into various strategies of destabilizing normative binaries.

In the wake of the global financial crisis, the present 'age of austerity' has repeatedly been compared to the wartime and postwar austerity years. For many, the rise of austerity nostalgia suggests a compliant public in thrall to the command to 'keep calm and carry on' while the welfare state is dismantled around them. Yet, at the same time, the idea that the Second World War can serve as a compelling historical precedent for sustainable living has found favour in environmental and anti-consumerist debate. Challenging dominant approaches to 'austerity', Rebecca Bramall explores the presence and persuasiveness of the past in contemporary popular culture, focusing intensively on the contradictions, antagonisms, alternatives and possibilities that the current conjuncture presents. In doing so, she exemplifies a new approach to emergent uses of the past, questioning longstanding assumptions about the relationship between history, culture and politics.

Radio, the most widely used medium in the world, is a dominant mediator of musical meaning. Through a combination of critical analysis, interdisciplinary theory and ethnographic writing about community radio, this book provides a novel theorisation of democratic aesthetics, with important implications for the study of old and new media alike.

Surveillance, privacy and public trust form a burgeoning presence within debates surrounding technological developments, particularly in the current 'war on terror' environment. Social, economic and political issues are invoked in collecting, categorizing, scrutinizing and mobilizing information on the everyday activities of the population. These are implicated in new legislative developments, ways of conceptualizing society and a growth in the industry of protest. However, what do we know about the day to day detail of these developments? This book situates these issues in a detailed study of CCTV to offer a timely, robust and incisive contribution to knowledge.

This collected volume gathers a broad spectrum of social science and information science articles about Facebook. It looks into facets of users, such as age, sex, and culture, and into facets of use, e.g. privacy behavior after the Snowden affair, unfriending on Facebook, or Facebook addiction, as well as into quality perceptions. Written by leading scholars investigating the impact of Web 2.0., this volume is highly relevant for social media researchers, information scientists, and social scientists, and, not least, for everyone interested in Facebook-related topics.