Amidst continuing debates about the literary canon, Literature, Culture and Society poses a revealing question--if academics find it valuable and stimulating to discuss texts ranging from Genesis to Bladerunner in their leisure time, why do they act as if this is sacrosanct in their formal work? In this well- argued and refreshing discussion of the history and importance of literary criticism, Milner embraces a reality that many in the academy still fear, that cultural studies is alive, and it's here to stay.

Andrew Milner begins with an introduction to the field of cultural studies and its parent disciplines of English literature and sociology. He reviews the defining terms and the theoretical traditions in a manner that is sophisticated but accessible. He discusses just how and why cultural studies evolved, and what it has to offer our appraisal of all texts, be they old or new, print or film. Milner eschews both cultural populism and literary elitism in favor of a criticism that is more concerned with value than with exclusion. The author concludes this significant and insightful book with a demonstration of his theories, tying together a group of narratives ranging from Paradise Lost to the latest Frankenstein films. Literature, Culture and Society cogently examines the question of scholarship and forcefully demonstrates that rigorous academic inquiry need not be reserved for dust-covered texts alone.

Locating science fiction as its own distinct and increasingly important narrative form, this book explores how the genre challenges pervasive perceptions of society as presented in the conventional modern novel. Inspired by, and building upon, Georg Lukacs's criticism of the orthodox novel for its depiction of life as alienating and disjointed, Milner, Murphy and Roberts posit that science fiction steps beyond this contemporary form to be a more constructive literature, better able to conceive of society as complete, integrated and well-rounded. Taking stock of three kinds of science fiction which lie outside the scope of the modern novel - theological or ontological science fiction, the science fiction of future history and epic science fiction - this book demonstrates science fiction's unique capacity to encapsulate the whole world, persons and events, things and objects in a glance, and address the motive behind the wish for a meaningful totality. With reference to a vast array of works by authors such as Michel Houellebecq, Elias Canetti, Isaac Asimov, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, Marge Piercy, Iain M. Banks, Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, William Gibson, Dirk C. Fleck, Philip K. Dick, George Orwell and Kazuo Ishiguro, this book offers a compelling argument for rethinking the position and potential of the science fiction novel and to challenge the way we perceive our culture.

Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction explores the ethical concerns and dimensions of representations of the future of global science fiction, focusing on the issues that dominate utopian, dystopian and science fiction literature. The essays examine recent visions of the future in science fiction and re-examine earlier texts through contemporary lenses. Across fourteen chapters, the collection considers authors from Algeria, Australia, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Macedonia, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the UK and USA. The volume delves into a range of ethical questions of immediate contemporary relevance, including environmental ethics, postcolonial ethics, social justice, animal ethics and the ethics of alterity.

Raymond Williams was an enormously influential figure in late twentieth-century intellectual life as a novelist, playwright and critic, "the British Sartre", as The Times put it. He was a central inspiration for the early British New Left and a close intellectual supporter of Plaid Cymru. He is widely acknowledged as one of the "founding fathers" of cultural studies, who established "cultural materialism" as a new paradigm for work in both literary and cultural studies. There is a substantial secondary literature on Williams, which treats his life and work in each of these respects. But none of it makes much of his enduring contribution to utopian studies and science fiction studies. This volume brings together a complete collection of Williams's critical essays on science fiction and futurology, utopia, and dystopia, in literature, film, television, and politics, and with extracts from his two future novels, The Volunteers (1978) and The Fight for Manod (1979). Both the collection as a whole and the individual readings are accompanied by introductory essays written by Andrew Milner.

As cultural studies has grown from its origins on the margins of literary studies, it has tended to discard both literature and sociology in favor of the semiotics of popular culture." Literature, Culture and Society" makes a determined attempt to re-establish the connections between literary studies, cultural studies and sociology.
Arguing against both literary humanism and sociological relativism, it provides a critical overview of theoretical approaches to textual analysis, from hermeneutics to postmodernism, and presents a substantive account of the capitalist literary mode of production.
This second edition has been fully revised and rewritten, with new sections including the impact of psychoanalysis and post-structuralism, and the recent work of academics such as Franco Moretti.
New case studies have been added in order to examine the intertextual connections between "Genesis," Milton's "Paradise Lost," "Frankenstein" (in Mary Shelley's original and also in several film versions), "Karel Capek's R.U.R.," Fritz Lang's "Metropolis," Ridley Scott's B"lade Runner," "The X-Files" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer,"

This lucid and concise introduction to cultural theory brings a much-needed sense of historical and theoretical scale to the growth of cultural studies. Contemporary Cultural Theory identifies six alternative paradigms in cultural studies - utilitarianism, culturalism, marxism, structuralism, feminism and postmodernism - and explores the socio-discursive contexts within which each of these have developed Each of the chapters in this third edition has been extensively revised to include entirely new material, on such topics as the new historicism, Zizek, Bourdieu, Bakhtin, Deleuze and Guattari, queer theory, Black and Latino cultural studies and posthumanism.

Related link: www.mediastudiesarena.com

Contents:
1. Cultural Studies and Cultural Theory 2. Literature and Society: From Culturalism to Cultural Materialism 3. Critical Theory: From Ideology Critique to the Sociology of Culture 4. Semiology: From Structuralism to Post-Structuralism 5. The Cultural Politics of Difference 6. Postmodernism and Cultural Theory 7. Cultural Criticism and Cultural Policy

As cultural studies has grown from its origins on the margins of literary studies, it has tended to discard both literature and sociology in favor of the semiotics of popular culture." Literature, Culture and Society" makes a determined attempt to re-establish the connections between literary studies, cultural studies and sociology.
Arguing against both literary humanism and sociological relativism, it provides a critical overview of theoretical approaches to textual analysis, from hermeneutics to postmodernism, and presents a substantive account of the capitalist literary mode of production.
This second edition has been fully revised and rewritten, with new sections including the impact of psychoanalysis and post-structuralism, and the recent work of academics such as Franco Moretti.
New case studies have been added in order to examine the intertextual connections between "Genesis," Milton's "Paradise Lost," "Frankenstein" (in Mary Shelley's original and also in several film versions), "Karel Capek's R.U.R.," Fritz Lang's "Metropolis," Ridley Scott's B"lade Runner," "The X-Files" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer,"

Amidst continuing debates about the literary canon, Literature, Culture and Society poses a revealing question--if academics find it valuable and stimulating to discuss texts ranging from Genesis to Bladerunner in their leisure time, why do they act as if this is sacrosanct in their formal work? In this well- argued and refreshing discussion of the history and importance of literary criticism, Milner embraces a reality that many in the academy still fear, that cultural studies is alive, and it's here to stay.

Andrew Milner begins with an introduction to the field of cultural studies and its parent disciplines of English literature and sociology. He reviews the defining terms and the theoretical traditions in a manner that is sophisticated but accessible. He discusses just how and why cultural studies evolved, and what it has to offer our appraisal of all texts, be they old or new, print or film. Milner eschews both cultural populism and literary elitism in favor of a criticism that is more concerned with value than with exclusion. The author concludes this significant and insightful book with a demonstration of his theories, tying together a group of narratives ranging from Paradise Lost to the latest Frankenstein films. Literature, Culture and Society cogently examines the question of scholarship and forcefully demonstrates that rigorous academic inquiry need not be reserved for dust-covered texts alone.

Shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Best Non-Fiction Award 2020 Shortlisted for the Locus Science Fiction Foundation Non-Fiction Award 2021 Despite the occasional upsurge of climate change scepticism amongst Anglophone conservative politicians and journalists, there is still a near-consensus amongst climate scientists that current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas are sufficient to alter global weather patterns to disastrous effect. The resultant climate crisis is simultaneously both a natural and a socio-cultural phenomenon and in this book Milner and Burgmann argue that science fiction occupies a critical location within this nature/culture nexus. Science Fiction and Climate Change takes as its subject matter what Daniel Bloom famously dubbed 'cli-fi'. It does not, however, attempt to impose a prescriptively environmentalist aesthetic on this sub-genre. Rather, it seeks to explain how a genre defined in relation to science finds itself obliged to produce fictional responses to the problems actually thrown up by contemporary scientific research. Milner and Burgmann adopt a historically and geographically comparatist framework, analysing print and audio-visual texts drawn from a number of different contexts, especially Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Finland, France, Germany, Japan and the United States. Inspired by Williams's cultural materialism, Bourdieu's sociology of culture and Moretti's version of world systems theory, the book builds on Milner's own Locating Science Fiction to produce a powerfully persuasive study in the sociology of literature.

Again, Dangerous Visions: Essays in Cultural Materialism brings together twenty-six essays charting the development of Andrew Milner's distinctively Orwellian version of cultural materialism between 1981 and 2015. The essays address three substantive areas: the sociology of literature, cultural materialism and the cultural politics of the New Left, and utopian and science fiction studies. They are bookended by two conversations between Milner and his editor J.R. Burgmann, the first looking back retrospectively on the development of Milner's thought, the second looking forward prospectively towards the future of academia, the political left and science fiction.

Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction explores the ethical concerns and dimensions of representations of the future of global science fiction, focusing on the issues that dominate utopian, dystopian and science fiction literature. The essays examine recent visions of the future in science fiction and re-examine earlier texts through contemporary lenses. Across fourteen chapters, the collection considers authors from Algeria, Australia, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Macedonia, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the UK and USA. The volume delves into a range of ethical questions of immediate contemporary relevance, including environmental ethics, postcolonial ethics, social justice, animal ethics and the ethics of alterity.

Shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Best Non-Fiction Award 2020 Shortlisted for the Locus Science Fiction Foundation Non-Fiction Award 2021 Despite the occasional upsurge of climate change scepticism amongst Anglophone conservative politicians and journalists, there is still a near-consensus amongst climate scientists that current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas are sufficient to alter global weather patterns to disastrous effect. The resultant climate crisis is simultaneously both a natural and a socio-cultural phenomenon and in this book Milner and Burgmann argue that science fiction occupies a critical location within this nature/culture nexus. Science Fiction and Climate Change takes as its subject matter what Daniel Bloom famously dubbed 'cli-fi'. It does not, however, attempt to impose a prescriptively environmentalist aesthetic on this sub-genre. Rather, it seeks to explain how a genre defined in relation to science finds itself obliged to produce fictional responses to the problems actually thrown up by contemporary scientific research. Milner and Burgmann adopt a historically and geographically comparatist framework, analysing print and audio-visual texts drawn from a number of different contexts, especially Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Finland, France, Germany, Japan and the United States. Inspired by Williams's cultural materialism, Bourdieu's sociology of culture and Moretti's version of world systems theory, the book builds on Milner's own Locating Science Fiction to produce a powerfully persuasive study in the sociology of literature.