Suburban Fantastic Cinema is a study of American movies in which preteen and teenage boys living in the suburbs are called upon to combat a disruptive force that takes the form of popular cultural figures of the fantastic—aliens, ghosts, vampires, demons, and more. Beginning in the 1980s with Poltergeist and E.T. (both 1982) and a cycle of films made by Amblin Entertainment, the suburban fantastic established itself as a popular commercial model combining coming-of-age melodramas with elements drawn from science fiction, fantasy, and horror. The films that exemplify the subgenre generally focus on a young male protagonist who, at the outset, chafes at his stifling suburban milieu, wherein power is invested in whiteness, maleness, and heterosexuality. A fantastic occurrence intervenes - the arrival of an alien, a ghost, or some other magical or otherworldly force - threatening this familiar order, thrusting the young man - at first unwittingly - into the role of defender and upholder of the social order. He is able to rescue the suburban social order, and in doing so normalizes (for himself and for the primarily white, male, adolescent audience) its values. This study discusses some of the key instances of this subgenre, such as Gremlins (1984), Back to the Future (1985), Jumanji (1995), and Small Soldiers (1998), as well as its more recent resurgence in Stranger Things (2016–) and IT (2017). Exploring the importance of suburbia as a setting and the questionable ideological blindness of its heroes, this book reveals these underappreciated Hollywood films as the primary cinematic representation of late-twentieth-century American childhood.

This book offers the first critical edition of the forty short texts James Joyce called “epiphanies.” Among Joyce’s earliest literary compositions, although published posthumously, the epiphanies are a series of highly polished miniatures, many of which Joyce reused in his later writings. By presenting the epiphanies with background details and thorough annotations, this edition provides a vivid insight into his art. Collected Epiphanies of James Joyce features an introduction to the texts that summarizes Joyce’s concept of epiphany; their biographical and cultural context; their echoes and adaptations in Stephen Hero, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake; and their critical reception and editorial history. Each epiphany is transcribed directly from its original manuscript, accompanied by extensive notes that include more information specific to each piece, as well as textual variants. Styled as prose poems, dramatic sketches, or combinations of the two, the epiphanies can be seen not only as lyrical counterparts to Joyce’s poetry in Chamber Music but also as bridges to the writer’s landmark fiction. This collection demonstrates that the epiphanies offer a paradigm case for studying the development of Joyce’s work as a whole, prompting a reassessment of their literary significance.