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.

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.

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 book explores how the women's orchestra at Auschwitz-Birkenau has been remembered in both media and popular culture since the end of the Second World War. In particular it focuses on Fania Fenelon's memoir, Playing for Time (1976), which was subsequently adapted into a film. Since then the publication has become a cornerstone of Holocaust remembrance and scholarship. Susan Eischeid therefore investigates whether it deserves such status, and whether such material can ever be considered reliable source material for historians. Using divergent source material gathered by the author, such as interviews with the other surviving members of the orchestra, this Pivot seeks to shed light on this period of women's history, and questions how we remember the Holocaust today.

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.

This book examines the paradox of China and the United States' literary and visual relationships, morphing between a happy duet and a contentious duel in fiction, film, poetry, comics, and opera from both sides of the Pacific. In the 21st century where tension between the two superpowers escalates, a gaping lacuna lies in the cultural sphere of Sino-Anglo comparative cultures. By focusing on a "Sinophone-Anglophone" relationship rather than a "China-US" one, Sheng-mei Ma eschews realpolitik, focusing on the two languages and the cross-cultural spheres where, contrary to Kipling's twain, East and West forever meet, like a repetition compulsion bordering on neurosis over the self and its cultural other. Indeed, the coupling of the two-duet-cum-duel-is so predictable that each seems attracted to and repulsed by its dark half, semblable, (in)compatible for their shared larger-than-life-ness.

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.

Through American history, often in times of crisis, there have been periodic outbreaks of obsession with the paranormal. Between 2004 and 2019, over six dozen documentary-style series dealing with paranormal subject matter premiered on television in the United States. Combining the stylistic traits of horror with earnest accounts of what are claimed to be actual events, "paranormal reality" incorporates subject matter formerly characterized as occult or supernatural into the established category of reality TV. Despite the high number of programs and their evident popularity, paranormal reality television has to date received little critical attention. Ghost Channels: Paranormal Reality Television and the Haunting of Twenty-First-Century America provides an overview of the paranormal reality television genre, its development, and its place in television history. Conducting in-depth analyses of over thirty paranormal television series, including such shows as Ghost Hunters, Celebrity Ghost Stories, and Long Island Medium, author Amy Lawrence suggests these programs reveal much about Americans' contemporary fears. Through her close readings, Lawrence asks, "What are these shows trying to tell us?" and "What do they communicate about contemporary culture if we take them seriously and watch them closely?" Ridiculed by nearly everyone, paranormal reality TV shows-with their psychics, ghost hunters, and haunted houses-provide unique insights into contemporary American culture. Half-horror, half-documentary realism, these shows expose deep-seated questions about class, race, gender, the value of technology, the failure of institutions, and what it means to be American in the twenty-first century.

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.

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.

Crumbling business models mean news media structures must change. Gavin Ellis explores the past and present use of newspaper trusts - drawing on case studies such as the Guardian, the Irish Times and the Pulitzer Prize winning Tampa Bay Times - to make the case for a form of ownership dedicated to sustaining high quality journalism.

This book is a collective effort by researchers affiliated with the CERES Research School in Development Studies in the Netherlands. These experts discuss themes and concepts crucial to the overlapping fields of globalization and development research. Individual chapters examine the notions and issues of globalization, livelihood, identity, governance, transnationalism, and knowledge.

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.

Copyright governance is in a state of flux because the boundaries between legal and illegal consumption have blurred. Trajce Cvetkovski interrogates the disorganizational effects of piracy and emerging technologies on the political economy of copyright in popular music, film and gaming industries.

McGee studies historical representation in commodified, popular cinema as expressions of historical truths that more authentic histories usually miss and argues for the political and social significance of mass culture through the interpretation of four recent big-budget movies: Titanic, Gangs of New York, Australia, and Inglourious Basterds .

The over-the-top musicals of Bollywood may be the most familiar aspect of Indian popular culture, but there are many more, all explored in this fascinating volume. Pop Culture India! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle follows the rise of modern India's pop culture world, especially since the 1980s, when relaxed censorship and economic liberalization led to an explosion in movies, music, mass media, consumerism, spiritual practices, and more. It is a captivating introduction to a diverse nation whose appetite for entertainment has led to some surprising twists and turns in recent history. How did a popular Indian television series spark a change in government and the rise of Hindu nationalism? Are some Bollywood film companies laundering money for organized crime, or even al Qaeda? What accounts for the overwhelming popularity of that quaint vestige of colonialism, cricket? The answers, and many more intriguing insights, await the reader in Pop Culture India! A rich collection of stills from Indian cinema, theater, television, and sports, plus photographs of significant sites and celebrities A multidisciplinary bibliography covering cinema, theater, television, radio, print media, sport, and sociology, plus a helpful glossary of key terms such as cablewallahs, bhajan, and playback

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.

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.

Digital media are rapidly changing the world in which we live. Global communications, mobile interfaces and Internet cultures are re-configuring our everyday lives and experiences.  To understand these changes, a new theoretical imagination is needed, one that is informed by a conceptual vocabulary that is able to cope with the daunting complexity of the world today. This book draws on writings by leading social and cultural theorists to assemble this vocabulary.  It addresses six key concepts that are pivotal for understanding the impact of new media on contemporary society and culture: information, network, interface, interactivity, archive and simulation. Each concept is considered through a range of concrete examples to illustrate how they might be developed and used as research tools. An inter-disciplinary approach is taken that spans a number of fields, including sociology, cultural studies, media studies and computer science.

In the first book-length study of this topic, D.W. McKiernan examines the way mainstream commercial cinema represents society's complex relationship with the idea and practice of community in the context of rapidly changing social conditions. Films examined include "Fond Kiss," "The Idiots" and "Monsoon Wedding."