During his lifetime, Henry F. Gilbert was regarded as one of the foremost composers of the day and a trailblazer in America's rich musical heritage. Often called the Mark Twain of American Music, Gilbert was one of American music's nonconformists. He was a maverick who became a true prophet of American music as a composer, writer, editor, and lecturer. This volume contains a short biography of Gilbert, a listing of his compositions, including the different versions of the works and the holding libraries. A discography is included, which puts emphasis on the inclusion of excerpts from contemporary performances. This book captures much of the new material on Gilbert that has surfaced since the Henry F. Gilbert Papers were presented to Yale.

The volume is divided into six sections. The first is the biography, which includes a sketch of Gilbert's life, and his importance in establishing an American school of composition. The Works and Performances section provides the name of the work, publisher, and date and revisions of the work. Scoring for the compositions is also given along with cross-references to Gilbert's program notes and reviews. An annotated Bibliography of writings by Gilbert summarizes his philosophy of American music, and illuminates his own compositional style. A discography, general bibliography, and a bibliography of works and performances are also concluded. This bio-bibliography will appeal to musicians and American enthusiasts alike.

This book offers analyses of the roles of race, gender, and sexuality in the post-apocalyptic visions of early twenty-first century film and television shows. Contributors examine the production, reproduction, and re-imagination of some of our most deeply held human ideals through sociological, anthropological, historical, and feminist approaches.

This wide-ranging exploration of the apocalypse in Western culture seeks to understand how we have come to be so preoccupied with spectacular visions of our own annihilation-offering abundant examples of the changing nature of our imagined destruction, and predisposing readers to discover many more all around them. The Apocalypse Is Everywhere: A Popular History of America's Favorite Nightmare explores why apocalyptic thinking exists, how it has been manifested in Western culture through the ages, and how it has woven itself so thoroughly into our popular culture today. Beginning with contemporary apocalyptic expressions, the book demonstrates how surprisingly widespread they are. It then discusses how we inherited them and where they arose. Author Annie Rehill surveys the ancient belief systems from which Christianity evolved, including ancient Judaism and other faiths. She explores the vision outlined in the Book of Revelation and traces the apocalyptic thread through the Middle Ages, across the Reformation and Enlightenment, and to the Americas. Finally, to prove that the Apocalypse is indeed everywhere, Rehill returns to the present to consider the idea of apocalypse as it occurs in movies, books, comics and graphic novels, games, music, and art, as well asin televangelism and even presidential speeches. Her fascinating scholarship will surely have readers looking about them with new eyes. Illustrations showcase the widespread belief in apocalypse, including medieval drawings as well as contemporary photographs and movie stills A wide-ranging bibliography points the way to significant materials from the fields of history, literature, popular culture, theology, and more

A visual journey from the minute to the infinite, exploring the relationships and harmonies between all parts of the universe and inspiring personal contemplation regarding our own place within it. In The Cosmic Dance, renowned image alchemist Stephen Ellcock presents a pan-global collection of remarkable, arresting and surprising images drawn from the entire history of art to explore the ancient belief that the cosmos is reflected in all living things. Organized thematically, the visual journey begins with the microscopic, the particulate and the elemental; then explores the human body as a cosmos in miniature, the beauty of divine proportions and our search for spiritual enlightenment; before finally revelling in the colossal, the celestial and the infinite. An eloquent introduction provides an overview of the central themes and expert commentaries introduce each section. Detailed panels provide bitesize information on key concepts and key thinkers - from the four elements to Cosmic Man and from the moebius strip to the Mandelbrot set - while thought-provoking quotations from philosophers, writers, artists and scientists interspersed throughout the artworks prompt a closer, more personal engagement with the images. This stunning treasury of artworks provides the perfect guide to a deeper contemplation of the world around us, allowing readers, in the words of William Blake, to 'see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour'.

Post-war America was an exciting time. It was an age characterized by backyard barbecues and beach parties, mai-tai cocktails and Ford Mustangs, high school hops, Hawaiian shirts and Hugh Hefner's Playboy empire. This book charts middle-class America's move towards an ethos of conspicuous consumption and sexual license during the fifties and sixties. Focusing on two of the period'smost visible icons -- the swinging bachelor and the vibrant teenager -- this book looks at the interconnected changes that took place for American youth culture and masculinity as consumption and leisure established themselves as the dominant features of middle-class life. The author draws on a wide variety of popular examples--men's magazines, fashion and style, books, film and music--to argue that the bachelor and the teenager were complementary and interrelated stereotypes that shaped America's youth. Magazines such as Esquire and Playboy, and bands like the Beach Boys, framed and shaped a new meaning of the young American male that contrasted sharply with previous values of sobriety and moderation. This book discusses the images and icons that shaped masculinity in particular. By focusing on the changes both in masculine identity and in the form and representation of youth culture, American life is looked at from a fresh and innovative perspective.

Food Discourse explores a fascinating, yet virtually unexplored research area: the language of food used on television cooking shows. It shows how the discourse of television cooking shows on the American television channel Food Network conveys a pseudo-relationship between the celebrity chef host and viewers. Excerpts are drawn from a variety of cooking show genres (how-to, travel, reality, talk, competition), providing the data for this qualitative investigation. Richly interdisciplinary, the study draws upon discourse analysis, narrative, social semiotics, and media communication in order to analyze four key linguistic features - recipe telling, storytelling, evaluations, and humor - in connection with the themes of performance, authenticity, and expertise, essential components in the making of celebrity chefs. Given its scope, the book will be of interest to scholars of linguistics, media communication, and American popular culture. Further, in light of the international reach and influence of American television and celebrity chefs, it has a global appeal.

This book provides an engaging historical survey of the vampire in American popular culture over 100 years, ranging from Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula to HBO's television series True Blood. Vampires in the New World surveys vampire films and literature from both national and historical perspectives since the publication of Bram Stoker's Dracula, providing an overview of the changing figure of the vampire in America. It focuses on such essential popular culture topics as pulp fiction, classic horror films, film noir, science fiction, horror fiction, blaxploitation, and the recent Twilight and True Blood series in order to demonstrate how cultural, scientific, and ideological trends are reflected and refracted through the figure of the vampire. The book will fascinate anyone with an interest in vampires as they are found in literature, film, television, and popular culture, as well as readers who appreciate horror and supernatural fiction, crime fiction, science fiction, and the gothic. It will also appeal to those who are interested in the interplay between society and film, television, and popular culture, and to readers who want to understand why the figure of the vampire has remained compelling to us across different eras and generations.

This collection explores the representation and performance of queer youth in media cultures, primarily examining TV, film and online new media. Specific themes of investigation include the context of queer youth suicide and educational strategies to avert this within online new media, and the significance of coming out videos produced online.

Despite the fact that the Nintendo DS is one the most popular game systems of all time, theorists have largely ignored it. Here, Samuel Tobin argues that the reason for this is that the DS is literally and figuratively beneath notice and not just by game scholars but by its own players as well. Indeed it is the very "everydayness" of the Nintendo DS and of mobile gaming in general that is invisible yet filled with critical potential. Portable Play in Everyday Life explores how this everyday device fits into players' homes, commutes and lives. Drawing on discourse analysis and ethnographic methods, Tobin looks at the contexts, constraints and desires that animates and complicates mobile play. This is a significant shift away from examining the fantastic spaces inside of games to looking instead at the real world and lives in which play happens and why sometimes the "good enough" is just right.

Through nine seasons the TV show Supernatural has delved into social, philosophical, literary, and theological themes that not only add depth to the show, but reflect our era's intellectual concerns. This book contextualizes Supernatural within the renaissance of the fantastic in pop culture and traces its roots in folklore and Biblical narrative.

The Irish do death differently. Funeral attendance is a solemn duty - but it can also be a big day out, requiring sophisticated crowd control, creative parking solutions and a high-end sound system. Despite having the same basic end-of-life infrastructure as other Western countries, Irish culture handles death with a unique blend of dignified ritual and warm sociability. In Sorry for Your Trouble, Ann Marie Hourihane holds up a mirror to the Irish way of death: the funny bits, the sad bits, and the hard-to-explain bits that tell us so much about who we are. She follows the last weeks of a woman's life in hospice; she witnesses an embalming; she attends inquests; she talks to people working to prevent suicide; she follows the team of specialists working to locate the remains of people 'disappeared' by the IRA; and she visits some of Ireland's most contested graves. She also explores the strange and sometimes surprising histories of Irish death practices, from the traditional wake and ritual lamentations to the busy commerce between anatomists and bodysnatchers. And she goes to funerals, of ordinary and extraordinary people all over the country - including that of her own father. 'I had joined a club,' she writes, 'the club of people who have lost someone very close to them.' And then, with her family, she sets about planning a funeral in the middle of a pandemic. Sorry for Your Trouble sheds fresh, wise and witty light on a key pillar of Irish culture: a vast but strangely underexplored subject. Rich, sparkling and eye-opening, it is one of the best books ever written about Irish life. ___________________________ 'A beautiful, insightful reflection on a very, very peculiar country's approach to the oddest experience of them all' RYAN TUBRIDY 'Hugely moving and illuminating. All of life, somehow, is here' TANYA SWEENEY, IRISH INDEPENDENT 'Moving, comforting and funny' BUSINESS POST

This fascinating new study is about cultural change and continuities. At the core of the book are discrete literary studies of Scotland and Shakespeare, Walter Scott, R.L. Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, the modern Scottish Renaissance of the 1920s and more recent cultural and literary phenomena. The central theme of literature and popular 'representation' recontextualises literary analysis in a broader, multi-faceted picture involving all the arts and the changing sense of what 'the popular' might be in a modern nation. New technologies alter forms of cultural production and the book charts a way through these forms, from oral poetry and song to the novel, and includes studies of paintings, classical music, socialist drama, TV, film and comic books. The international context for mass media cultural production is examined as the story of the intrinsic curiosity of the imagination and the intensely local aspect of Scotland's cultural self-representation unfolds.

The astounding commercial success of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, not just with adolescent girls (as originally intended), but with a large and diverse audience, makes interpreting their underlying themes vital for understanding the ways that we perceive and interact with each other in contemporary society. Literary critics have interpreted vampires from Stoker's Dracula to Rice's Lestat in numerous ways-as symbols of deviant sexuality; as transgressive figures of sexual empowerment; as xenophobic representations of foreigners; as pop culture figures that reveal the attitudes of the masses better than any scholarly writing-and the Twilight saga is no exception. The essays in this collection use these interpretative lens and others to interrogate the meanings of Meyer's books, making a compelling case for the cultural relevance of Twilight and providing insights on how we can "read" popular culture to our best advantage. The volume will be of interest to academic and lay readers alike: undergraduates, graduate students, and instructors of children's and young adult literature, contemporary U.S. literature, gothic literature, and popular culture, as well as the myriad Twilight fans who seek to explore and re-explore the novels from a variety of angles.

This book systematically introduces the popular science industry. It firstly summarizes the social basis and research status of the development of contemporary science popularization industry and also elaborates on the basic theory and main forms of science popularization industry. The most important feature of this book is its focus on the practice and case study of the development of science popularization industry in China. Meanwhile, it analyzes the development of science popularization industry in China from four perspectives: the basis and conditions, the current situation and countermeasures, the main promotion tasks, and the policy suggestions for promotion. The book analyzes the development trend of science popularization industry in China. It can be used as a reference book for science popularization practitioners and enthusiast to learn and understand the theory and practice of science popularization industry. It can also be used as a textbook for the cultivation and training of science popularization talents.

Published to coincide with an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, this is an expressive exploration of Black popular culture at its most wildly imaginative, artistically ambitious and politically urgent. In the Black Fantastic assembles art and imagery from across the African diaspora that embraces ideas of the mythic and the speculative. Neither Afrofuturism nor Magic Realism, but inhabiting its own universe, In the Black Fantastic brings to life a cultural movement that conjures otherworldly visions out of the everyday Black experience - and beyond - looking at how speculative fictions in Black art and culture are boldly reimagining perspectives on race, gender, identity and the body in the 21st century. Transcending time, space and genre to span art, design, fashion architecture, film, literature and popular culture from African myth to future fantasies and beyond, this vital, timely and compelling publication is an expressive exploration of Black popular culture at its most wildly imaginative, artistically ambitious and politically urgent.

Young People, Popular Culture and Education explores the inter-relationship between the three fields and considers how these relationships have informed teaching practice, especially in the school context. Reflective exercises, interviews, chapter summaries and useful websites will encourage and support student learning and the application of new concepts. Recent debates and developments are considered, including: Culture and youth; New youth research; 'Race' and representation; Children and television; Young adult fictions; Popular music, youth and education; and, Youth, politics, citizenship. "Young People, Popular Culture and Education" is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students on education studies and related courses. This series presents an authoritative, coherent and focused collection of texts to introduce the contemporary issues that are covered in Education Studies, and related programmes. Each book develops a key theme in contemporary education, such as: Multiculturalism; The social construction of childhood; Urban education; eLearning and multimedia; and, Language and literacy. A key feature of this series is the critical exploration of education in times of rapid change, with links made between such developments in wider social, cultural, political and economic contexts. Further, contextualised extracts from important primary texts, such as Bourdieu, Piaget and Vygotsky, will ensure students' exposure to dominant contemporary theories in the field of education. Grounded in a strong conceptual, theoretical framework and presented in an accessible way with the use of features such as case studies, activities and visual devices to encourage and support student learning and the application of new concepts, this series will serve well as collection of core texts for the Education Studies student and lecturer.

Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) challenge what players understand as "real." Alternate Reality Games and the Cusp of Digital Gameplay is the first collection to explore and define the possibilities of ARGs. Though prominent examples have existed for more than two decades, only recently have ARGs come to the prominence as a unique and highly visible digital game genre. Adopting many of the same strategies as online video games, ARGs blur the distinction between real and fictional. With ARGs continuing to be an important and blurred space between digital and physical gameplay, this volume offers clear analysis of game design, implementation, and ramifications for game studies. Divided into three distinct sections, the contributions include first hand accounts by leading ARG creators, scholarly analysis of the meaning behind ARGs, and explorations of how ARGs are extending digital tools for analysis. By balancing the voices of designers, players, and researchers, this collection highlights how the Alternate Reality Game genre is transforming the ways we play and interact today.

Ongoing interest in the turmoil of the 1960s clearly demonstrates how these social conflicts continue to affect contemporary politics. In The Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements, Kristen Hoerl focuses on fictionalized portrayals of 1960s activism in popular television and film. Hoerl shows how Hollywood has perpetuated politics deploring the detrimental consequences of the 1960s on traditional American values. During the decade, people collectively raised fundamental questions about the limits of democracy under capitalism. But Hollywood has proved dismissive, if not adversarial, to the role of dissent in fostering progressive social change. Film and television are salient resources of shared understanding for audiences born after the 1960s because movies and television programs are the most accessible visual medium for observing the decade's social movements. Hoerl indicates that a variety of television programs, such as Family Ties, The Wonder Years, and Law and Order, along with Hollywood films, including Forrest Gump, have reinforced images of the ""bad sixties."" These stories portray a period in which urban riots, antiwar protests, sexual experimentation, drug abuse, and feminism led to national division and moral decay. According to Hoerl, these messages supply distorted civics lessons about what we should value and how we might legitimately participate in our democracy. These warped messages contribute to ""selective amnesia,"" a term that stresses how popular media renders radical ideas and political projects null or nonexistent. Selective amnesia removes the spectacular events and figures that define the late-1960s from their motives and context, flattening their meaning into reductive stereotypes. Despite popular television and film, Hoerl explains, memory of 1960s activism still offers a potent resource for imagining how we can strive collectively to achieve social justice and equality.

The routine traffic stop that ends in tragedy. The spy who spends years undetected at the highest levels of the Pentagon. The false conviction of Amanda Knox. Why do we so often get other people wrong? Why is it so hard to detect a lie, read a face or judge a stranger's motives? Through a series of encounters and misunderstandings - from history, psychology and infamous legal cases - Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual adventure into the darker side of human nature, where strangers are never simple and misreading them can have disastrous consequences. No one challenges our shared assumptions like Malcolm Gladwell. Here he uses stories of deceit and fatal errors to cast doubt on our strategies for dealing with the unknown, inviting us to rethink our thinking in these troubled times.

Chronicles the development of Western ballet focusing on the social and cultural forces which influenced the dancer's art.

This book applies insights from the spheres of academic scholarship and clinical experience to demonstrate the usefulness of psychoanalysis for developing nuanced and innovative approaches to media and cultural analysis.

Technoscientific developments often have far-reaching consequences, both negative and positive, for the public. Yet, because science has the authority to decide which judgments about scientific issues are sound, public concerns are often dismissed because they are not part of the technoscientific paradigm they question. This book addresses the role of science popularization in that paradox; it explains how science writing works and argues that it can do better at promoting public discussions about science-related issues. To support these arguments, it situates science popularization in its historical and cultural context; provides a conceptual framework for analyzing popular science texts; and examines the rhetorical effects of common strategies used in popular science writing. Twenty-six years after Dorothy Nelkin's groundbreaking book, Selling Science: How the Press Covers Science and Technology, popular science writing is still not meeting its potential as a public interest genre; Communicating Popular Science explores how it can move closer to doing so.

This book covers significant new ground, examining the impact and imprint of new leading technology on a range of popular expressions. This technology includes the internet, the computer, the cell phone, television, and radio, among others. Some of the specific expressions and phenomena treated include: tourism, big budget films, sports, video games, entertainment culture, religious and gospel culture, mobile culture, popular music, writing and technology, and porn. The work shows acute awareness of the wider global contexts--social, cultural, political, and spiritual--that form the backdrop for Caribbean cultural reconfiguration. Curwen Best argues that Caribbean culture has gone wireless, virtual, and simulated in the age of the machines.