Popular culture Books

Book SynopsisExamining the deep philosophical topics addressed in superhero comics, authors Gavaler and Goldberg read plot lines for the complex thought experiments they contain and analyze their implications as if the comic authors were philosophers. Reading superhero comic books through a philosophical lens reveals how they experiment with complex issues of morality, metaphysics, meaning, and medium. Given comics' ubiquity and influence directly on (especially young) readers-and indirectly on consumers of superhero movies and video games-understanding these deeper meanings is in many ways essential to understanding contemporary popular culture. The result is an entertaining and enlightening look at superhero dilemmas.

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Book SynopsisIn this first-ever comprehensive examination of queerbaiting, fan studies scholar Joseph Brennan and his contributors examine cases that shed light on the sometimes exploitative industry practice of teasing homoerotic possibilities that, while hinted at, never materialize in the program narratives. Through a nuanced approach that accounts for both the history of queer representation and older fan traditions, these essayists examine the phenomenon of queerbaiting across popular TV, video games, children's programs, and more. Contributors: Evangeline Aguas, Christoffer Bagger, Bridget Blodgett, Cassie Brummitt, Leyre Carcas, Jessica Carniel, Jennifer Duggan, Monique Franklin, Divya Garg, Danielle S. Girard, Mary Ingram-Waters, Hannah McCann, Michael McDermott, E. J. Nielsen, Emma Nordin, Holly Eva Katherine Randell-Moon, Emily E. Roach, Anastasia Salter, Elisabeth Schneider, Kieran Sellars, Isabela Silva, Guillaume Sirois, Clare Southerton

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Book SynopsisAcross all imaginable borders, Johnny Cash fans show the appeal of a thoroughly American performer who simultaneously inspires people worldwide. A young Norwegian shows off his Johnny Cash tattoo. A Canadian vlogger sings 'I Walk the Line' to camel herders in Egypt's White Desert. A shopkeeper in Northern Ireland plays Cash as his constant soundtrack. A Dutchwoman coordinates the activities of Cash fans worldwide and is subsequently offered the privilege of sleeping in Johnny's bedroom. And on a more global scale, millions of people watch Cash's videos online, then express themselves through commentary and debate.In Johnny Cash International, Hinds and Silverman examine digital and real-world fan communities and the individuals who comprise them, profiling their relationships to Cash and each other. Studying Johnny Cash's international fans and their love for the man reveals new insights about music, fandom, and the United States.

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Book SynopsisThe historic and mythic elements of the American Old West—covered wagon trains, herds of buffalo, teepee villages, Indigenous warriors on horseback, cowboys on open ranges, and white settlers “taming” a wilderness with their plows and log cabins—have exerted a global fascination for more than 200 years and became the foundation for fan communities who have endured for generations. This book examines some of those communities, particularly German fans inspired by the authors of Westerns such as Karl May, and American enthusiasts of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series. But the Old West (like all visions of the past) proved to be shifting cultural terrain. In both Germany and the U. S., Western narratives of white settlement were once seen as “apolitical” and were widely accepted by white people. But during the Nazi period in Germany and in East Germany after 1945, the American West was reevaluated and politically repurposed. Then, during the late twentieth century, understandings of the West changed in the U. S. as well, while the violence of white settler colonialism and the displacement of Indigenous peoples became a flashpoint in the culture wars between right and left. Reagin shows that the past that fans seek to recreate is shaped by the changing present, as each new generation adapts and relives their own West.

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Book SynopsisThe discipline of fan studies is famously undisciplined. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t structured. This is the first comprehensive primer for classroom use that shows students how to do fan studies in practical terms. With contributions from a range of established and emerging scholars, coeditors Paul Booth and Rebecca Williams pull together case studies that demonstrate the wide array of methodologies available to fan studies scholars, such as auto/ethnography, immersion, interviews, online data mining, historiography, and textual analysis. This collection also probes the ethical questions that are unique to fan studies work, such as the use of online fan content for research, interview methods, consent, and privacy.

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Book SynopsisThis collection is the first to offer a close study of fan generations, which are defined not only by fans’ ages, but by their entry point into a canon or their personal politics. The contributors further the conversation about how generational fandom is influenced by and, in turn, influences technologies, industry practices, and social and political changes. As reboot culture continues, as franchises continue expanding over time, and as new technologies enable easier access to older media, Fandom, the Next Generation offers a necessary investigation into transgenerational fandoms and intergenerational fan relationships.Contributors:Maria Alberto, University of UtahMélanie Bourdaa, University of Bordeaux MontaigneMeredith Dabek, Maynooth UniversitySimone Driessen, Erasmus University RotterdamYektanurşin Duyan, Mardin Artuklu UniversityDan Golding, Swinburne University of TechnologyBethan Jones, Aberdale, WalesSiobhan Lyons, Sydney, New South WalesL. N. Rosales, University of Nebraska, LincolnAndrew Scahill, University of Colorado, DenverJanelle Vermaak-Griessel, Nelson Mandela UniversityCynthia W. Walker, St. Peter’s UniversityDawn Walls-Thumma, Coventry, VermontNeta Yodovich, University of Haifa

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Book SynopsisFor many, the words “Dungeons & Dragons” conjure a fuzzy image, most likely of teenage boys in a dim basement hunched over a tabletop game. In Welcome to Dragon Talk, Shelly Mazzanoble, Greg Tito, and their surprising guests bring a different image into focus, offering: What if those boys were girls? Were famous actors? Were educators, therapists, and politicians? After nearly five decades, Dungeons & Dragons is more popular than ever and has drawn together a community that defies stereotypes. In this collection, the hosts of Dragon Talk, the official D&D podcast, recount some of the most inspiring stories from their guests. All use the core tenets of the game in their everyday life. Actor Joe Manganiello defends D&D by baring his soul (and his ripped abs). A teacher in a disadvantaged district in Houston, creates a D&D club that motivates students to want to read and think analytically. Writer and streamer Tanya DePass shows how D&D–inspired communication skills break barriers and empower people of color. Readers will see how D&D has given this disparate and growing community the inspiration to flourish in their careers and spread some of that in-game magic in real life—and how you can too.

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Book SynopsisWith Essays by Baru, Bart Beaty, Cécile Vernier Danehy, Hugo Frey, Pascal Lefèvre, Fabrice Leroy, Amanda Macdonald, Mark McKinney, Ann Miller, and Clare Tufts In Belgium, France, Switzerland, and other French-speaking countries, many well-known comics artists have focused their attention on historical and political events. In works ranging from comic books and graphic novels to newspaper strips, cartoonists have addressed such controversial topics as French and Belgian collaboration and resistance during World War II, European colonialism and U.S. imperialism, anti-Semitism in France, the integration of African immigrant groups in Europe, and the green and feminist movements. History and Politics in French-Language Comics and Graphic Novels collects new essays that address comics from a variety of viewpoints, including a piece from practicing artist Baru. The explorations range from discussion of such canonical works as Hergé's Tintin series to such contemporary expressions as Baru's Road to America (2002), about the Algerian War. Included are close readings of specific comics series and graphic novels, such as Cécile Vernier Danehy's examination of Cosey's Saigon Hanoi, about remembering the Vietnam War. Other writers use theoretical lenses as a means of critiquing a broad range of comics, such as Bart Beaty's Bourdieu-inspired reading of today's comics field, and Amanda Macdonald's analysis of bandes dessinées (French comic books) in New Caledonia during the 1990s. The anthology establishes the French-language comics tradition as one rich with representations of history and politics and is one of the first English-language collections to explore the subject.

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Book SynopsisVisual Vitriol: The Street Art and Subcultures of the Punk and Hardcore Generation is a vibrant, in-depth, and visually appealing history of punk, which reveals punk concert flyers as urban folk art. David Ensminger exposes the movement's deeply participatory street art, including flyers, stencils, and graffiti. This discovery leads him to an examination of the often-overlooked presence of African Americans, Latinos, women, and gays and lesbians who have widely impacted the worldviews and music of this subculture. Then Ensminger, the former editor of fanzine Left of the Dial, looks at how mainstream and punk media shape the public's outlook on the music's history and significance.Often derided as litter or a nuisance, punk posters have been called instant art, Xerox art, or DIY street art. For marginalized communities, they carve out spaces for resistance. Made by hand in a vernacular tradition, this art highlights deep-seated tendencies among musicians and fans. Instead of presenting punk as a predominately middle-class, white-male phenomenon, the book describes a convergence culture that mixes people, gender, and sexualities.This detailed account reveals how members conceptualize their attitudes, express their aesthetics, and talk to each other about complicated issues. Ensminger incorporates an important array of scholarship, ranging from sociology and feminism to musicology and folklore, in an accessible style. Grounded in fieldwork, Visual Vitriol includes over a dozen interviews completed over the last several years with some of the most recognized and important members of groups such as Minor Threat, The Minutemen, The Dils, Chelsea, Membranes, 999, Youth Brigade, Black Flag, Pere Ubu, the Descendents, the Buzzcocks, and others.

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Book SynopsisJack Kirby (1917-1994) is one of the most influential and popular artists in comics history. With Stan Lee, he created the Fantastic Four and defined the drawing and narrative style of Marvel Comics from the 1960s to the present day. Kirby is credited with creating or cocreating a number of Marvel's mainstay properties, among them the X-Men, the Hulk, Thor, and the Silver Surfer. His earlier work with Joe Simon led to the creation of Captain America, the popular kid gang and romance comic genres, and one of the most successful comics studios of the 1940s and 1950s. Kirby's distinctive narrative drawing, use of bold abstraction, and creation of angst-ridden and morally flawed heroes mark him as one of the most influential mainstream creators in comics.In this book, Charles Hatfield examines the artistic legacy of one of America's true comic book giants. He analyzes the development of Kirby's cartooning technique, his use of dynamic composition, the recurring themes and moral ambiguities in his work, his eventual split from Lee, and his later work as a solo artist. Against the backdrop of Kirby's earlier work in various genres, Hand of Fire examines the peak of Kirby's career, when he introduced a new sense of scope and sublimity to comic book fantasy.

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Book SynopsisIn France, Belgium, and other Francophone countries, comic strips--called bande dessinée or ""BD"" in French--have long been considered a major art form capable of addressing a host of contemporary issues. Among French-speaking intelligentsia, graphic narratives were deemed worthy of canonization and critical study decades before the academy and the press in the United States embraced comics.The place that BD holds today, however, belies the contentious political route the art form has traveled. In Drawing France: French Comics and the Republic, author Joel E. Vessels examines the trek of BD from its being considered a fomenter of rebellion, to a medium suitable only for semi-literates, to an impediment to education, and most recently to an art capable of addressing social concerns in mainstream culture.In the mid-1800's, alarmists feared political caricatures might incite the ire of an illiterate working class. To counter this notion, proponents yoked the art to a particular articulation of ""Frenchness"" based on literacy and reason. With the post-World War II economic upswing, French consumers saw BD as a way to navigate the changes brought by modernization. After bande dessinée came to be understood as a compass for the masses, the government, especially François Mitterand's administration, brought comics increasingly into ""official"" culture. Vessels argues that BD are central to the formation of France's self-image and a self-awareness of what it means to be French.

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Book SynopsisA troubled childhood in Iran. Living with a disability. Grieving for a dead child. Over the last forty years the comic book has become an increasingly popular way of telling personal stories of considerable complexity and depth. In Autobiographical Comics: Life Writing in Pictures, Elisabeth El Refaie offers a long overdue assessment of the key conventions, formal properties, and narrative patterns of this fascinating genre. The book considers eighty-five works of North American and European provenance, works that cover a broad range of subject matters and employ many different artistic styles. Drawing on concepts from several disciplinary fields--including semiotics, literary and narrative theory, art history, and psychology--El Refaie shows that the traditions and formal features of comics provide new possibilities for autobiographical storytelling. For example, the requirement to produce multiple drawn versions of one's self necessarily involves an intense engagement with physical aspects of identity, as well as with the cultural models that underpin body image. The comics medium also offers memoirists unique ways of representing their experience of time, their memories of past events, and their hopes and dreams for the future. Furthermore, autobiographical comics creators are able to draw on the close association in contemporary Western culture between seeing and believing in order to persuade readers of the authentic nature of their stories.

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Book SynopsisSaved by Song returns to print with its sweeping overview of the history of gospel music. Powerful and incisive, the book traces contemporary Christianity and Christian music to the sixteenth century and the Protestant Reformation after examining music in the Bible and early church.In America, gospel music has been divided between white and black gospel. Within these divisions are further divisions: southern gospel, contemporary Christian music, spirituals, and hymns. Don Cusic has provided background and insight into the developments of all these rich facets of gospel music. From the psalms of the early Puritans through the hymns of Isaac Watts and the social activism of the Wesleys, to the camp meeting songs of the Kentucky Revival, the spirituals that came from the slave culture, and the hymns from the great revival after the Civil War, gospel music advanced through the nineteenth century. The twentieth century brought the technologies of recordings and the electronic media to gospel music.Saved by Song is ultimately the definitive and complete history of a uniquely American art form. It is a must for anyone interested in the musical and spiritual life of a nation.

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Book SynopsisDespite their commercial appeal and cross-media reach, superheroes are only recently starting to attract sustained scholarly attention. This groundbreaking collection brings together essays and book excerpts by major writers on comics and popular culture. While superhero comics are a distinct and sometimes disdained branch of comics creation, they are integral to the development of the North American comic book and the history of the medium. For the past half-century they have also been the one overwhelmingly dominant market genre. The sheer volume of superhero comics that have been published over the years is staggering. Major superhero universes constitute one of the most expansive storytelling canvases ever fashioned. Moreover, characters inhabiting these fictional universes are immensely influential, having achieved iconic recognition around the globe. Their images and adventures have shaped many other media, such as film, videogames, and even prose fiction. The primary aim of this reader is twofold: first, to collect in a single volume a sampling of the most sophisticated commentary on superheroes, and second, to bring into sharper focus the ways in which superheroes connect with larger social, cultural, literary, aesthetic, and historical themes that are of interest to a great many readers both in the academy and beyond.

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Book SynopsisThe boxer stands alongside the cowboy, the gangster, and the detective as a character that shaped America's ideas of manhood. Knockout: The Boxer and Boxing in American Cinema is the first book-length study of the Hollywood boxing film, a popular movie entertainment since the 1930s, that includes such classics as Million Dollar Baby, Rocky, and Raging Bull. Leger Grindon relates the Hollywood boxing film to the literature of Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, and Clifford Odets; the influence of ring champions, particularly Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali; and controversies surrounding masculinity, race, and sports.Knockout breaks new ground in film genre study by focusing on the fundamental dramatic conflicts uniting both documentary and fictional films with compelling social concerns. The boxing film portrays more than the rise and fall of a champion; it exposes the body in order to reveal the spirit. Not simply a brute, the screen boxer dramatizes conflicts and aspirations central to an American audience's experience. This book features chapters on the conventions of the boxing film, the history of the genre and its relationship to famous ring champions, and self-contained treatments of thirty-two individual films including a chapter devoted to Raging Bull.

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Book SynopsisThe early 1980s saw a revolution in mainstream comics--in subject matter, artistic integrity, and creators' rights--as new methods of publishing and distribution broadened the possibilities. Among those artists utilizing these new methods, Chester Brown (b. 1960) quickly developed a cult following due to the undeniable quality and originality of his Yummy Fur (1983-1994).Chester Brown: Conversations collects interviews covering all facets of the cartoonist's long career and includes several pieces from now-defunct periodicals and fanzines. It also includes original annotations from Chester Brown, provided especially for this book, in which he adds context, second thoughts, and other valuable insights into the interviews. Brown was among a new generation of artists whose work dealt with decidedly nonmainstream subjects. By the 1980s comics were, to quote a by-now well-worn phrase, ""not just for kids anymore,"" and subsequent censorious attacks by parents concerned about the more salacious material being published by the major publishers--subjects that routinely included adult language, realistic violence, drug use, and sexual content--began to roil the industry. Yummy Fur came of age during this storm and its often-offensive content, including dismembered, talking penises, led to controversy and censorship.With Brown's highly unconventional adaptations of the Gospels, and such comics memoirs as The Playboy (1991/1992) and I Never Liked You (1991-1994), Brown gradually moved away from the surrealistic, humor oriented strips toward autobiographical material far more restrained and elegiac in tone than his earlier strips. This work was followed by Louis Riel (1999-2003), Brown's critically acclaimed comic book biography of the controversial nineteenth-century Canadian revolutionary, and Paying for It (2011), his best-selling memoir on the life of a john.

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Book SynopsisAutobiography has seen enormous expansions and challenges over the past decades. One of these expansions has been in comics, and it is an expansion that pushes back against any postmodern notion of the death of the author/subject, while also demanding new approaches from critics.Drawing from Life: Memory and Subjectivity in Comic Art is a collection of essays about autobiography, semiautobiography, fictionalized autobiography, memory, and self-narration in sequential art, or comics. Contributors come from a range of academic backgrounds including English, American studies, comparative literature, gender studies, art history, and cultural studies. The book engages with well-known figures such as Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi, and Alison Bechdel; with cult-status figures such as Martin Vaughn-James; and with lesser-known works by artists such as Frédéric Boilet.Negotiations between artist/writer/body and drawn/written/text raise questions of how comics construct identity, and are read and perceived, requiring a critical turn towards theorizing the comics' viewer. At stake in comic memoir and semi-autobiography is embodiment. Remembering a scene with the intent of rendering it in sequential art requires nonlinear thinking and engagement with physicality. Who was in the room and where? What was worn? Who spoke first? What images dominated the encounter? Did anybody smile? Man or mouse? Unhinged from the summary paragraph, the comics artist must confront the fact of the flesh, or the corporeal world, and they do so with fascinating results.

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Book SynopsisDangerous Curves: Action Heroines, Gender, Fetishism, and Popular Culture addresses the conflicted meanings associated with the figure of the action heroine as she has evolved in various media forms since the late 1980s. Jeffrey A. Brown discusses this immensely popular character type, the action heroine, as an example of, and challenge to, existing theories about gender as a performance identity. Her assumption of heroic masculine traits combined with her sexualized physical depiction demonstrates the ambiguous nature of traditional gender expectations and indicates a growing awareness of more aggressive and violent roles for women.The excessive sexual fetishization of action heroines is a central theme throughout. The topic is analyzed as an insight into the transgressive image of the dominatrix, as a reflection of the shift in popular feminism from second-wave politics to third-wave and postfeminist pleasures, and as a form of patriarchal backlash that facilitates a masculine fantasy of controlling strong female characters. Brown interprets the action heroine as a representation of changing gender dynamics that balances the sexual objectification of women with progressive models of female strength. While the primary focus of this study is the action heroine as represented in Hollywood film and television, the book also includes the action heroine's emergence in contemporary popular literature, comic books, cartoons, and video games.

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Book SynopsisIn Making and Remaking Horror in the 1970s and 2000s author David Roche takes up the assumption shared by many fans and scholars that original horror movies are more ""disturbing,"" and thus better than the remakes. He assesses the qualities of movies, old and recast, according to criteria that include subtext, originality, and cohesion. With a methodology that combines a formalist and cultural studies approach, Roche sifts aspects of the American horror movie that have been widely addressed (class, the patriarchal family, gender, and the opposition between terror and horror) and those that have been somewhat neglected (race, the Gothic, style, and verisimilitude). Containing seventy-eight black and white illustrations, the book is grounded in a close comparative analysis of the politics and aesthetics of four of the most significant independent American horror movies of the 1970s--The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, Dawn of the Dead, and Halloween--and their twenty-first-century remakes. To what extent can the politics of these films be described as ""disturbing"" insomuch as they promote subversive subtexts that undermine essentialist perspectives? Do the politics of the film lie on the surface or are they wedded to the film's aesthetics? Early in the book, Roche explores historical contexts, aspects of identity (race, ethnicity, and class), and the structuring role played by the motif of the American nuclear family. He then asks to what extent these films disrupt genre expectations and attempt to provoke emotions of dread, terror, and horror through their representations of the monstrous and the formal strategies employed? In this inquiry, he examines definitions of the genre and its metafictional nature. Roche ends with a meditation on the extent to which the technical limitations of the horror films of the 1970s actually contribute to this ""disturbing"" quality. Moving far beyond the genre itself, Making and Remaking Horror studies the redux as a form of adaptation and enables a more complete discussion of the evolution of horror in contemporary American cinema.

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Book SynopsisWell Done: Stephen F. Austin State University 90th Anniversary Cookbook is a veritable feast and a unique book in many ways. For readers interested in East Texas history or for alumni of Stephen F. Austin State University, Well Done provides an exceptional pictorial profile and overview of the university, its campus, its events, and its array of characters spanning 90 years. Among the photographs are those of historical figures who played prominently on the SFA campus and in the larger Nacogdoches community, athletes past to present, students, faculty, games, social activities, and so on. Each page is a visual surprise, and nostalgia becomes a heartwarming occasion here. Were this not palatable enough in itself, the book is also a comprehensive cookbook, containing a variety of wonderful recipes that readers and cooking enthusiasts anywhere may enjoy. The recipes are tried and true and provided for the occasion by campus luminaries, faculty, and SFA friends. As an illustrated cookbook, Well Done is a true delight for eyes and for appetites, and the careful fusion of photographs and foods is remarkable.

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Book SynopsisEducation is a main issue in all countries. Policy makers, educators, families, students and, in a more general way, societies expect schools to provide a high quality education. They also expect students to be able to achieve and to become active and critical citizens. As senior researchers in education, we address some of the most complex and demanding research questions: How does learning affect identity? How does participation to educational settings, scenarios and situations impact the way we are or became? Can changes in how we perceive our Selves be considered as part of the learning process? This book attempts to outline some answers to such broad questions using a very robust and updated theoretical frame: the dialogical approach. In these chapters very well-known international authors from different continents and countries analyse school and educational situations through new lens: by considering the teaching and learning processes as multi-voiced and socially complex and considering identity development as a true leverage for development. The focus on the dialogical nature of both learning and identities makes this book interesting not only for educators and educational researchers but also for anyone interested in human sciences, policy makers, students and their families. We also aimed at producing a book that can be useful for different cultures and educational systems. Thus, in this book there are researches and comments from different cultural perspectives, making it appealing for a very large target-public.

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Book SynopsisEducation is a main issue in all countries. Policy makers, educators, families, students and, in a more general way, societies expect schools to provide a high quality education. They also expect students to be able to achieve and to become active and critical citizens. As senior researchers in education, we address some of the most complex and demanding research questions: How does learning affect identity? How does participation to educational settings, scenarios and situations impact the way we are or became? Can changes in how we perceive our Selves be considered as part of the learning process? This book attempts to outline some answers to such broad questions using a very robust and updated theoretical frame: the dialogical approach. In these chapters very well-known international authors from different continents and countries analyse school and educational situations through new lens: by considering the teaching and learning processes as multi-voiced and socially complex and considering identity development as a true leverage for development. The focus on the dialogical nature of both learning and identities makes this book interesting not only for educators and educational researchers but also for anyone interested in human sciences, policy makers, students and their families. We also aimed at producing a book that can be useful for different cultures and educational systems. Thus, in this book there are researches and comments from different cultural perspectives, making it appealing for a very large target-public.

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Book SynopsisBy the 1740s, colonists living in North America began to encounter scores of itinerant performers from England and Europe. These show people—acrobats, wire dancers, tumblers, trick riders, painters, dancing-masters, waxworks proprietors, healers, and singing and language teachers—brought novelty and culture to remote areas. Advertising in newspapers, they attracted audiences with the hook of appearing “for a short time only.”In this richly illustrated and deeply researched book, Peter Benes examines the rise of early American popular culture through the lives and work of itinerants who circulated in British North America and the United States from the late seventeenth through the early nineteenth century. Although they were frequently reviled as quacks and absconders by many provincials, these transients enjoyed a unique camaraderie and found audiences among high- and lowbrow alike. Drawing on contemporary diaries, letters, reminiscences, and hitherto inaccessible newspaper ads, broadsides, and images, Benes suggests why some elements of Europe’s carnival and folklore traditions failed to gain acceptance in American society while others flourished brilliantly.Trade ReviewThis is an original and scholarly study, based on an impressively deep knowledge of a cultural world that we have lost, and so a book with wide potential appeal.""—Peter Burke, author of A Social History of Knowledge II: From the Encyclopédie to Wikipedia""For a Short Time Only is a masterful work of research.""—David Jaffe, author of A New Nation of Goods: The Material Culture of Early America

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Book SynopsisBetween 1959 and 1968, New England saw a folk revival emerge in more than fifty clubs and coffeehouses, a revolution led by college dropouts, young bohemians, and lovers of traditional music that renewed the work of the region's intellectuals and reformers. From Club 47 in Harvard Square to candlelit venues in Ipswich, Martha's Vineyard, and Amherst, budding musicians and hopeful audiences alike embraced folk music, progressive ideals, and community as alternatives to an increasingly toxic consumer culture. While the Boston-Cambridge Folk Revival was short-lived, the youthful attention that it spurred played a crucial role in the civil rights, world peace, and back-to-the-land movements emerging across the country. Fueled by interviews with key players from the folk music scene, I Believe I'll Go Back Home traces a direct line from Yankee revolutionaries, up-country dancers, and nineteenth-century pacifists to the emergence of blues and rock 'n' roll, ultimately landing at the period of the folk revival. Thomas S. Curren presents the richness and diversity of the New England folk tradition, which continues to provide perspective, inspiration, and healing in the present day.Trade Review“Accessibly written by a knowledgeable and esteemed author, I Believe I’ll Go Back Home does a good job of taking the reader on a journey along the ethnic origins of folk music that have absorbed into our culture.”- John Kane, author of The Last Seat in the House: The Story of Hanley Sound

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Book SynopsisWorks of genre fiction are a source of enjoyment, read during cherished leisure time and in incidental moments of relaxation. This original book takes readers inside popular genres of fiction, including crime, fantasy, and romance, to reveal how personal tastes, social connections, and industry knowledge shape genre worlds. Attuned to both the pleasure and the profession of producing genre fiction, the authors investigate contemporary developments in the field—the rise of Amazon, self-publishing platforms, transmedia storytelling, and growing global publishing conglomerates—and show how these interact with older practices, from fan conventions to writers' groups.Sitting at the intersection of literary studies, genre studies, fan studies, and studies of the book and publishing cultures, Genre Worlds considers how contemporary genre fiction is produced and circulated on a global scale. Its authors propose an innovative theoretical framework that unfolds genre fiction's most compelling characteristics: its connected social, industrial, and textual practices. As they demonstrate, genre fiction books are not merely texts; they are also nodes of social and industrial activity involving the production, dissemination, and reception of the texts.

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Book SynopsisWorks of genre fiction are a source of enjoyment, read during cherished leisure time and in incidental moments of relaxation. This original book takes readers inside popular genres of fiction, including crime, fantasy, and romance, to reveal how personal tastes, social connections, and industry knowledge shape genre worlds. Attuned to both the pleasure and the profession of producing genre fiction, the authors investigate contemporary developments in the field—the rise of Amazon, self-publishing platforms, transmedia storytelling, and growing global publishing conglomerates—and show how these interact with older practices, from fan conventions to writers' groups.Sitting at the intersection of literary studies, genre studies, fan studies, and studies of the book and publishing cultures, Genre Worlds considers how contemporary genre fiction is produced and circulated on a global scale. Its authors propose an innovative theoretical framework that unfolds genre fiction's most compelling characteristics: its connected social, industrial, and textual practices. As they demonstrate, genre fiction books are not merely texts; they are also nodes of social and industrial activity involving the production, dissemination, and reception of the texts.

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Book SynopsisBob Dylan is an iconic American artist, whose music and performances have long reflected different musical genres and time periods. His songs tell tales of the Civil War, harken back to 1930s labor struggles, and address racial violence at the height of the civil rights movement, helping listeners to think about history, and history making, in new ways. While Dylan was warned by his early mentor, Dave Van Ronk, that, "You're just going to be a history book writer if you do those things. An anachronism," the musician has continued to traffic in history and engage with a range of source material—ancient and modern—over the course of his career.In this beautifully crafted book, Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez makes a provocative case for Dylan as a historian, offering a deep consideration of the musician's historical influences and practices. Drawing on interviews, speeches, and the close analysis of lyrics and live performances, Bob Dylan in the Attic is the first book to consider Dylan's work from the point of view of historiography.Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1 What Do You Mean You Can’t Repeat the Past?: Dylan’s Historical Universe CHAPTER 2“ Conjuring Up All These Long Dead Souls”: How Dylan “Does” History CHAPTER 3 “Sing in Me, Oh Muses”: Dylan as Mythmaker CHAPTER 4 “There’s Something Happening Here . . . Mr. Jones”: Interpreting Dylan Historically CHAPTER 5 “The Blood of the Land in My Voice”: Dylan’s Authorial Persona CONCLUSION Notes Index

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Book SynopsisA Special Relationship provides not only a historical overview of the British in Hollywood, but also a detailed study of the contributions made by American individuals and companies to British cinema from the beginning of the twentieth century onwards. The story begins with Ohio-born Charles Urban who came to London in 1898 and deserves credit for major involvement in the creation of a British film industry. While Ireland was still a part of Britain, the New York-based Kalem Company made films there from 1910 to 1913. British producers realized the importance of American stars, and many actors, beginning with Florence Turner (who was arguably also the first American star), made numerous British films. In the 1920s, such Hollywood stars as Mae Marsh, Betty Blythe, and Dorothy Gish remained active in Britain. In the 1930s, as their careers came to a halt, more than one hundred former American stars made the trip to England, partly as a vacation and partly in the hope of reenergizing their careers.Chapters discuss American cinematographers at work in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s and the introduction of Technicolor to British films. Diversity is represented by African American performers (most notably Paul Robeson), the Chinese American star Anna May Wong, along with female filmmakers from Hollywood. With Britain's declaration of war on Germany, there were Americans who stayed, such as Bebe Daniels and Ben Lyon, contributing to the war effort. America became actively involved in British cinema after World War II, with many Hollywood studios producing films there. As the years progressed, the British film industry became an international film industry. The book concludes with the Harry Potter and James Bond series, indicative of a new international cinema, with financing and behind-the-camera talent coming from the United States, but with British locales and British stars.

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Book SynopsisBoys Love Manga and Beyond looks at a range of literary, artistic and other cultural products that celebrate the beauty of adolescent boys and young men. In Japan, depiction of the ""beautiful boy"" has long been a romantic and sexualized trope for both sexes and commands a high degree of cultural visibility today across a range of genres from pop music to animation.In recent decades, ""Boys Love"" (or simply BL) has emerged as a mainstream genre in manga, anime, and games for girls and young women. This genre was first developed in Japan in the early 1970s by a group of female artists who went on to establish themselves as major figures in Japan's manga industry. By the late 1970s many amateur women fans were getting involved in the BL phenomenon by creating and self-publishing homoerotic parodies of established male manga characters and popular media figures. The popularity of these fan-made products, sold and circulated at huge conventions, has led to an increase in the number of commercial titles available. Today, a wide range of products produced both by professionals and amateurs are brought together under the general rubric of ""boys love,"" and are rapidly gaining an audience throughout Asia and globally.This collection provides the first comprehensive overview in English of the BL phenomenon in Japan, its history and various subgenres and introduces translations of some key Japanese scholarship not otherwise available. Some chapters detail the historical and cultural contexts that helped BL emerge as a significant part of girls' culture in Japan. Others offer important case studies of BL production, consumption, and circulation and explain why BL has become a controversial topic in contemporary Japan.

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Book SynopsisBlack and Brown Planets embarks on a timely exploration of the American obsession with color in its look at the sometimes contrary intersections of politics and race in science fiction. The contributors, including De Witt D. Kilgore, Edward James, Lisa Yaszek, and Marleen S. Barr, among others, explore science fiction worlds of possibility (literature, television, and film), lifting blacks, Latin Americans, and indigenous peoples out from the background of this historically white genre.This collection considers the role of race and ethnicity in our visions of the future. The first section emphasizes the political elements of black identity portrayed in science fiction from black America to the vast reaches of interstellar space framed by racial history. In the next section, analysis of indigenous science fiction addresses the effects of colonization, helps discard the emotional and psychological baggage carried from its impact, and recovers ancestral traditions in order to adapt in a post-Native-apocalyptic world. Likewise, this section explores the affinity between science fiction and subjectivity in Latin American cultures from the role of science and industrialization to the effects of being in and moving between two cultures. By infusing more color in this otherwise monochrome genre, Black and Brown Planets imagines alternate racial galaxies with viable political futures in which people of color determine human destiny.

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Book SynopsisGrand in its scope, Asian Comics dispels the myth that, outside of Japan, the continent is nearly devoid of comic strips and comic books. Relying on his fifty years of Asian mass communication and comic art research, during which he traveled to Asia at least seventy-eight times and visited many studios and workplaces, John A. Lent shows that nearly every country had a golden age of cartooning and has experienced a recent rejuvenation of the art form.As only Japanese comics output has received close and by now voluminous scrutiny, Asian Comics tells the story of the major comics creators outside of Japan. Lent covers the nations and regions of Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.Organized by regions of East, Southeast, and South Asia, Asian Comics provides 178 black-and-white illustrations and detailed information on comics of sixteen countries and regions--their histories, key creators, characters, contemporary status, problems, trends, and issues. One chapter harkens back to predecessors of comics in Asia, describing scrolls, paintings, books, and puppetry with humorous tinges, primarily in China, India, Indonesia, and Japan. The first overview of Asian comic books and magazines (both mainstream and alternative), graphic novels, newspaper comic strips and gag panels, plus cartoon/humor magazines, Asian Comics brims with facts, fascinating anecdotes, and interview quotes from many pioneering masters, as well as younger artists.

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Book SynopsisIn A Vulgar Art Ian Brodie uses a folkloristic approach to stand-up comedy, engaging the discipline's central method of studying interpersonal, artistic communication and performance. Because stand-up comedy is a rather broad category, people who study it often begin by relating it to something they recognize--""literature"" or ""theatre""; ""editorial"" or ""morality""--and analyze it accordingly. A Vulgar Art begins with a more fundamental observation: someone is standing in front of a group of people, talking to them directly, and trying to make them laugh. So this book takes the moment of performance as its focus, that stand-up comedy is a collaborative act between the comedian and the audience.Although the form of talk on the stage resembles talk among friends and intimates in social settings, stand-up comedy remains a profession. As such, it requires performance outside of the comedian's own community to gain larger and larger audiences. How do comedians recreate that atmosphere of intimacy in a roomful of strangers? This book regards everything from microphones to clothing and LPs to Twitter as strategies for bridging the spatial, temporal, and socio-cultural distances between the performer and the audience.

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Book SynopsisIn the summer of 2000 X-Men surpassed all box office expectations and ushered in an era of unprecedented production of comic book film adaptations. This trend, now in its second decade, has blossomed into Hollywood's leading genre. From superheroes to Spartan warriors, The Comic Book Film Adaptation offers the first dedicated study to examine how comic books moved from the fringes of popular culture to the center of mainstream film production.Through in-depth analysis, industry interviews, and audience research, this book charts the cause-and-effect of this influential trend. It considers the cultural traumas, business demands, and digital possibilities that Hollywood faced at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The industry managed to meet these challenges by exploiting comics and their existing audiences. However, studios were caught off-guard when these comic book fans, empowered by digital media, began to influence the success of these adaptations. Nonetheless, filmmakers soon developed strategies to take advantage of this intense fanbase, while codifying the trend into a more lucrative genre, the comic book movie, which appealed to an even wider audience. Central to this vibrant trend is a comic aesthetic in which filmmakers utilize digital filmmaking technologies to engage with the language and conventions of comics like never before.The Comic Book Film Adaptation explores this unique moment in which cinema is stimulated, challenged, and enriched by the once-dismissed medium of comics.

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Book SynopsisWhile the success of Disneyland is largely credited to Walt and Roy Disney, there was a third, mostly forgotten dynamo instrumental to the development of the park - fast-talking Texan C. V. Wood. Three Years in Wonderland presents the never-before-told, full story of ""the happiest place on earth."" Using information from over one hundred unpublished interviews, Todd James Pierce lays down the arc of Disneyland's development from an idea to a paragon of entertainment.In the early 1950s, the Disney brothers hired Wood and his team to develop a feasibility study for an amusement park Walt wanted to build in southern California. ""Woody"" quickly became a central figure. In 1954, Roy Disney hired him as Disneyland's first official employee, its first general manager, and appointed him vice president of Disneyland, Inc., where his authority was exceeded only by Walt. A brilliant project manager, Wood was also a con man of sorts. Previously, he had forged his university diploma. A smooth-talker drawn to Hollywood, the first general manager of Disneyland valued money over art. As relations soured between Wood and the Disney brothers, Wood found creative ways to increase his income, leveraging his position for personal fame. Eventually, tensions at the Disney park reached a boiling point, with Walt demanding he be fired.In compelling detail, Three Years in Wonderland lays out the struggles and rewards of building the world's first cinematic theme park and convincing the American public that a $17 million amusement park was the ideal place for a family vacation. The early experience of Walt Disney, Roy Disney, and C. V. Wood is one of the most captivating untold stories in the history of Hollywood. Pierce interviewed dozens of individuals who enjoyed long careers at the Walt Disney Company as well as dozens of individuals who - like C. V. Wood - helped develop the park but then left the company for good once the park was finished. Through much research and many interviews, Three Years in Wonderland offers readers a rare opportunity to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the men and women who built the best-known theme park in the world.

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Book SynopsisCitizenship on Catfish Row focuses on three seminal works in the history of American culture: the first full-length narrative film, D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation; the first integrated musical, Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern's Showboat; and the first great American opera, George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Each of these works sought to make a statement about American identity in the form of a narrative, and each included in that narrative a prominent role for Black people.Each work included jarring or discordant elements that pointed to a deeper tension between the kind of stories Americans wish to tell about themselves and the historical and social reality of race. Although all three have been widely criticized, their efforts to connect the concepts of nation and race are not only instructive about the history of the American imagination but also provide unexpected resources for contemporary reflection.

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Book SynopsisCitizenship on Catfish Row focuses on three seminal works in the history of American culture: the first full-length narrative film, D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation; the first integrated musical, Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern's Showboat; and the first great American opera, George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Each of these works sought to make a statement about American identity in the form of a narrative, and each included in that narrative a prominent role for Black people.Each work included jarring or discordant elements that pointed to a deeper tension between the kind of stories Americans wish to tell about themselves and the historical and social reality of race. Although all three have been widely criticized, their efforts to connect the concepts of nation and race are not only instructive about the history of the American imagination but also provide unexpected resources for contemporary reflection.

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Book SynopsisForeword by Jeff Kelley. Nevada's open spaces have long inspired complex responses from a population largely shaped by European sensibilities toward land and its uses. In Mapping the Empty Fox considers how eight of the state's most distinguished and innovative contemporary artists have responded to the harsh, enigmatic landscapes of the Great Basin and how, through their work, they have expressed and helped to define our attitudes toward the space we call the West. The artists are Jim McCormick, Rita Deanin Abbey, Dennis Parks, Walter McNamara, Robert Beckmann, Michael Heizer, Bill Barker, and Mary Ann Bonjorni.Trade Review"Just imagine if any of the unreadable high-theory academics from your college art history classes had been storytellers, and you have, say, Mapping the Empty."—Jenny Price Bomb Magazine"Mapping the Empty is as perceptive in its analysis of each distinguished artist as it is in painting the big picture for us: that there's more to understand and appreciate in this mostly empty space than first meets the eye."—Phil Hagen, Las Vegas Life"An eye-opening introduction to just how much important art is being made in Nevada."—Geoff Schumacher, Las Vegas CityLifeTable of Contents Contents List of Illustrations List of Color Plates Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction: Mapping the Empty Jim Mccormick The Topographical Mind RITA DEANIN ABBEY Art in the Place of Abstraction DENNIS PARKS An Art of Modest Means WALTER MCNAMARA Reassembling Reality ROBERT BECKMANN Practicing Apocalypse MICHAEL HEIZER The Perforated Object BILL BARKER Marketing the Alien(s) MARY ANN BONJORNI Reconfiguring the West Sources

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Book SynopsisThe story goes that under the influence of blues and rock and roll, Britain suddenly started making spectacularly great music in the 1960s like some clever, quick learning cultural satellite of America. But Britain's mid twentieth-century pop music explosion didn't happen from a standing start. The reasons something so dazzling and multifaceted lie deeper than those legendary deliveries of blues records to Liverpool's port and the legacy of music halls. Featuring new discoveries and original insights, Why Britain Rocked: How Rock became Roll and Took over the World argues the Beatles' arrival, which stunned the world, really shouldn't have been surprising at all. From the Celts, Henry VIII, and the Quakers to Ira Aldridge and Paul Robeson, Why Britain Rocked uncovers the unique events and unexpected influences that encouraged British pop to be glorious, crazy, luminous, joyous, profound, melancholic, ferocious, anarchic, witty, smart and wonderful in all its ways.

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Book SynopsisIn the years since his death in 1993, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar has become a globally recognized symbol of crime, wealth, power, and masculinity. In this long-overdue exploration of Escobar's impact on popular culture, Aldona Bialowas Pobutsky shows how his legacy inspired the development of narcoculture—television, music, literature, and fashion representing the drug-trafficking lifestyle—in Colombia and around the world.Pobutsky looks at the ways the "Escobar brand" surfaces in bars, restaurants, and clothing lines; in Colombia's tourist industry; and in telenovelas, documentaries, and narco memoirs about his life, which in turn have generated popular interest in other drug traffickers such as Griselda Blanco and Miami's "cocaine cowboys." Pobutsky illustrates how the Colombian state strives to erase his memory while Escobar's notoriety only continues to increase in popular culture through the transnational media. She argues that the image of Escobar is inextricably linked to Colombia's internal tensions in the areas of cocaine politics, gender relations, class divisions, and political corruption and that his "brand" perpetuates the country's reputation as a center of organized crime, to the dismay of the Colombian people. This book is a fascinating study of how the world perceives Colombia and how Colombia's citizens understand their nation's past and present.A volume in the series Reframing Media, Technology, and Culture in Latin/o America, edited by Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez

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Book SynopsisHow the public image of the Soviet cosmonaut was designed and reimagined over timeIn this book, Cathleen Lewis discusses how the public image of the Soviet cosmonaut developed beginning in the 1950s and the ways this icon has been reinterpreted throughout the years and in contemporary Russia. Compiling material and cultural representations of the cosmonaut program, Lewis provides a new perspective on the story of Soviet spaceflight, highlighting how the government has celebrated figures such as Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova through newspapers, radio, parades, monuments, museums, films, and even postage stamps and lapel pins.Lewis’s analysis shows that during the Space Race, Nikita Khrushchev mobilized cosmonaut stories and images to symbolize the forward-looking Soviet state and distract from the costs of the Cold War. Public perceptions shifted after the first Soviet spaceflight fatality and failure to reach the Moon, yet cosmonaut imagery was still effective propaganda, evolving through the USSR’s collapse in 1991 and seen today in Vladimir Putin’s government cooperation for a film on the 1985 rescue of the Salyut 7 space station. Looking closely at the process through which Russians continue to reexamine their past, Lewis argues that the cultural memory of spaceflight remains especially potent among other collective Soviet memories.Trade Review“An innovative study of pop culture, memorabilia, propaganda, and hero worship, Cosmonaut brings the Soviet space program to life from inside Soviet society.”—Foreword Reviews

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Book SynopsisA hemispheric view of the practice of digital humanities in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking AmericasAs digital media and technologies transform the study of the humanities around the world, this volume provides the first hemispheric view of the practice of digital humanities in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Americas. These essays examine how participation and research in new media have helped configure identities and collectivities in the region.Featuring case studies from throughout Latin America, including the United States Latinx community, contributors analyze documentary films, television series, and social media to show how digital technologies create hybrid virtual spaces and facilitate connections across borders. They investigate how Latinx bloggers and online activists navigate governmental restrictions in order to connect with the global online community.These essays also incorporate perspectives of race, gender, and class that challenge the assumption that technology is a democratizing force. Digital Humanities in Latin America illuminates the cultural, political, and social implications of the ways Latinx communities engage with new technologies. In doing so, it connects digital humanities research taking place in Latin America with that of the Anglophone world.Contributors: Paul Alonso Morgan Ames Eduard Arriaga Anita Say Chan Ricardo Dominguez Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste Jennifer M. Lozano Ana Lígia Silva Medeiros Gimena del Río Riande Juan Carlos Rodríguez Isabel Galina Russell Angharad Valdivia Anastasia Valecce Cristina VenegasA volume in the series Reframing Media, Technology, and Culture in Latin/o America, edited by Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste and Juan Carlos RodríguezTrade ReviewA series of dynamic essays that investigate and problematise the impact of technology and digital culture on Latinx America. . . . While ambitious in scope, the volume offers a diversity of perspectives and case studies that highlight the unique affordances and consequences of the digital divide throughout parts of the United States and Latin America." —Bulletin of Latin American Research "A collection of excellent articles dealing with the impact of digital technologies and media in Latin American culture." —Revista de Estudios Hispánicos.Table of Contents List of Illustrations Introduction Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez 1. Tech Disruption as Knowledge Production: Cuba and the Digital Humanities Cristina Venegas 2. The Media Machine: One Laptop per Child in Paraguay Morgan Ames 3. Nation Branding: Neo Liberalism, Identity, and Social Media Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste 4. (In) Visible Cuba(s): Digital Conflict, Virtual Diasporas, and Cyber Mambises Anastasia Valecce 5. Digital Utopias, Latina/o Mediated Realities Angharad N. Valdivia 6. The Politics of Participation: La Bloga, Latino/a Cultural Politics, and the Limits of Digital Participatory Culture Jennifer Lozano 7. Afrolatin@ Digital Humanites or Rethinking Inclusion in the Digital Humanities Eduard Arriaga 8. Modularity, Mimesis and the Informatic Ideal: On Intersectional Struggles for Digital Human(itie)s in Latin America Anita Say Chan 9. Cuban Digital Pedagogies and the Question of the Interface in Yaima Pardo's Offline Juan Carlos Rodríguez 10. Carnival, Hybridity, and Latin American Digital Humor: The Ecuadorian Case of Enchufe.tv Paul Alonso 11. No Blogger, No Cry Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo 12. Electronic Civil Disobedience (ECD): Before 9/11 and After 9/11 Ricardo Domínguez 13. On DH in Argentina, an Interview with Gimena del Rio Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez 14. On DH in Brazil, an Interview with Ana Lígia Medeiros Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez 15. On DH in Mexico, an Interview with Isabel Galina Russell Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez Coda Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez Notes Works Cited Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisIn the summer of 1969, 400,000 people from across the country came together and redefined the music scene forever. Though the legacy and lore of Woodstock lives on in the memory of its attendees, a new generation can experience the real and unedited festival through Richard Bellak's never-before-seen photographs and John Kane's incredible new interviews.Pilgrims of Woodstock offers a vivid and intimate portrait of the overlooked stars of the festival: the everyday people who made Woodstock unforgettable. The photographs and interviews capture attendees' profound personal moments across hundreds of acres of farmland, as they meditated, played music, cooked food at night, and congregated around campfires. For three days, they helped and relied on each other in peace and harmony. For most, it was a life-changing event. Now, as the 50th anniversary of the famed festival approaches, relive their experiences firsthand in Pilgrims of Woodstock.Table of ContentsForeword by Tom LawIntroduction1. Early Arrival 2. Wednesday3. Thursday4. Friday5. Saturday6. Sunday

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Book SynopsisCould the Great Pyramid of Giza be a repository of ancient magical knowledge? Or perhaps evidence of a vanished pre–Ice Age civilization? Misinformation and myths have attached themselves to the Egyptian pyramids since ancient Greece and Rome. While many Americans believe that the pyramids were built by aliens, archaeologists understand that the Giza pyramids were built by the pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty around 2450 BCE. So why is there such a disconnect between scholarly opinion and the popular view of Egypt? In The Legends of the Pyramids, Jason Colavito takes us back to Late Antique Egypt, where the replacement of polytheism with Christianity gave rise to local efforts to rewrite the stories of Egyptian history in the image of the Bible. When the Arab conquest absorbed Egypt into the Islamic community, these stories then passed into Islamic historiography and reentered the West. Colavito's The Legends of the Pyramids lays open pop culture's view of Egypt in movies, TV shows, popular books, and New Age beliefs, detailing how the hidden history of Egypt has grown alongside the official history of archaeology and Egyptology.Trade ReviewThis highly recommended book is well researched, entertaining and original. Five stars. * Fortean Times *Table of ContentsNote on the TextIntroduction1. Ancient Testimonia2. Why Are the Pyramids Not in the Bible?3. Late Antiquity4. The Early Middle Ages5. Pyramid Legends in Medieval Islam6. The Meaning Behind the Myth7. The Translation of Pyramid Legends8. The Romance of the Pyramids9. The Great Mistake10. The Curse of King Tut11. Mummies in Outer Space12. Race and ReligionConclusionIndex

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Book SynopsisWhen blacksmith Pierre Michaux affixed pedals to the front axle of a two-wheeled scooter with a seat, he helped kick off a craze known as velocipedomania, which swept France in the late 1860s. The immediate forerunner of the bicycle, the velocipede similarly reflected changing cultural attitudes and challenged gender norms. Velocipedomania is the first in-depth study of the velocipede fad and the popular culture it inspired. It explores how the device was hailed as a symbol of France’s cutting-edge technological advancements, yet also marketed as an invention with a noble pedigree, born from the nation’s cultural and literary heritage. Giving readers a window into the material culture and enthusiasms of Second Empire France, it provides the first English translations of 1869’s Manual of the Velocipede, 1868’s Note on Monsieur Michaux’s Velocipede, and the 1869 operetta Dagobert and his Velocipede. It also reprints scores of rare images from newspapers and advertisements, analyzing how these magnificent machines captured the era’s visual imagination. By looking at how it influenced French attitudes towards politics, national identity, technology, fashion, fitness, and gender roles, this book shows how the short-lived craze of velocipedomania had a big impact. Trade Review“Engaging, well-researched, and expertly translated, Velocipedomania gives insight into the craze this two-wheeled machine inspired in the late 1860s and, more generally, into the rich popular culture of the period.”— Anne O’Neil-Henry, author of Mastering the Marketplace: Popular Literature in Nineteenth-Century France “In this engaging and informative book, Corry Cropper and Seth Whidden explore how, in late 1860s France, the forerunner of the bicycle came to be seen as a marker of modernity, freedom and even of national identity . . . A large number of contemporary cartoons and illustrations add to the rich source material—and to the reader’s enjoyment.”— French History “Careening across the stage, lifted into song, championed in story—velocipedes take France by storm in 1869-70. The machine of speed touches on gender, politics, class, and more. Never has cultural history been more informative or more fun than in the rollicking translations and commentary of Velocipedomania.”— Scott Carpenter, author of Aesthetics of Fraudulence in Nineteenth-Century France “In Velocipedomania, Cropper and Whidden bring to light an unexamined page of French cultural history—France’s obsession and cultural identification with the bicycle that began in the 1860s and that persists to this day. This lively compilation of texts about the velocipede, the iconic two-wheel wood and iron vehicle, will delight readers.”— Masha Belenky, author of Engine of Modernity: The Omnibus and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris “This book is a fabulous exploration of the social and cultural importance of the velocipede—a short-lived but consequential predecessor to the modern bicycle—in France during the late 1860s.”— Robert Lewis, author of The Stadium Century: Sport, Spectatorship and Mass Society in Modern FranceTable of ContentsIntroduction Velocipedomania CHAPTER ONE The Utilitarian Velocipede Note on Monsieur Michaux’s Velocipede CHAPTER TWO The Velocipede on Stage Dagobert and His Velocipede CHAPTER THREE Narrating Velocipedomania Manual of the Velocipede CHAPTER FOUR Velocipedomania in Verse CONCLUSION “We Thought the Velocipede Was Dead” Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Illustration Credits Index

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Book SynopsisWhen blacksmith Pierre Michaux affixed pedals to the front axle of a two-wheeled scooter with a seat, he helped kick off a craze known as velocipedomania, which swept France in the late 1860s. The immediate forerunner of the bicycle, the velocipede similarly reflected changing cultural attitudes and challenged gender norms. Velocipedomania is the first in-depth study of the velocipede fad and the popular culture it inspired. It explores how the device was hailed as a symbol of France’s cutting-edge technological advancements, yet also marketed as an invention with a noble pedigree, born from the nation’s cultural and literary heritage. Giving readers a window into the material culture and enthusiasms of Second Empire France, it provides the first English translations of 1869’s Manual of the Velocipede, 1868’s Note on Monsieur Michaux’s Velocipede, and the 1869 operetta Dagobert and his Velocipede. It also reprints scores of rare images from newspapers and advertisements, analyzing how these magnificent machines captured the era’s visual imagination. By looking at how it influenced French attitudes towards politics, national identity, technology, fashion, fitness, and gender roles, this book shows how the short-lived craze of velocipedomania had a big impact. Trade Review“Careening across the stage, lifted into song, championed in story—velocipedes take France by storm in 1869-70. The machine of speed touches on gender, politics, class, and more. Never has cultural history been more informative or more fun than in the rollicking translations and commentary of Velocipedomania.”— Scott Carpenter, author of Aesthetics of Fraudulence in Nineteenth-Century France “In Velocipedomania, Cropper and Whidden bring to light an unexamined page of French cultural history—France’s obsession and cultural identification with the bicycle that began in the 1860s and that persists to this day. This lively compilation of texts about the velocipede, the iconic two-wheel wood and iron vehicle, will delight readers.”— Masha Belenky, author of Engine of Modernity: The Omnibus and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris “Engaging, well-researched, and expertly translated, Velocipedomania gives insight into the craze this two-wheeled machine inspired in the late 1860s and, more generally, into the rich popular culture of the period.”— Anne O’Neil-Henry, author of Mastering the Marketplace: Popular Literature in Nineteenth-Century France “This book is a fabulous exploration of the social and cultural importance of the velocipede—a short-lived but consequential predecessor to the modern bicycle—in France during the late 1860s.”— Robert Lewis, author of The Stadium Century: Sport, Spectatorship and Mass Society in Modern FranceTable of ContentsIntroduction Velocipedomania CHAPTER ONE The Utilitarian Velocipede Note on Monsieur Michaux’s Velocipede CHAPTER TWO The Velocipede on Stage Dagobert and His Velocipede CHAPTER THREE Narrating Velocipedomania Manual of the Velocipede CHAPTER FOUR Velocipedomania in Verse CONCLUSION “We Thought the Velocipede Was Dead” Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Illustration Credits Index

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Book SynopsisCreative Industries in Canada is a foundational text that encourages students to think critically about creative industries within a Canadian context and interrogate the current state and future possibilities of the industry. While much of current creative industries literature concerns the United Kingdom, the United States, and Asia, this text captures the breadth of how Canadian industries are organized and experienced, and how they operate.This ambitious collection aims to guide students through the current landscape of Canadian creative industries through three thematic sections. "Production" collects chapters focused on how national discourses and identities are produced through creative industries and the tensions that exist between policy and media. "Participation" explores how we engage with these industries in different roles: as consumer, creator, policy-maker, and more. "Pedagogies" explores how education impacts inclusion and visibility in creative industries.Truly intersectional, Creative Industries in Canada provides students with practical industry knowledge and frameworks to explore the current state of the field and its future. With a broad application to many undergraduate programs, this text is a must-read resource for those pursuing media studies, arts management, creative and cultural industries studies, communications, and arts and humanities.Table of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction - Cheryl Thompson and Miranda Campbell Part I: Production: Meaning Making in the Creative IndustriesChapter 1: Creativity Policies and Districts: The Ambiguous Meaning of Creativity as a Source of Local Tensions in Montréal - Anouk Bélanger & Joëlle GélinasChapter 2: Race and Representation in Canadian Public Podcasting: A CBC Study - Jeff DonisonChapter 3: Institutional Production of Heritage within the Culture Sector in Canada - Susan Ashley Part II: Participation: Working and Community Building in the Creative IndustriesChapter 4: Laughter from the Sidelines: Precarious Work in the Canadian Comedy Industry - Madison TrusolinoChapter 5: Film in Canada's Creative Industries: Old Barriers and New Opportunities - George TurnbullChapter 6: Inclusion, Access, and Equity: Diversity Initiatives in Canada's Game Industry - Matthew Perks & Jennifer Whitson Chapter 7: Creative Hubs: Sites of Community and Creative Work - Mary Elizabeth Luka Part III: Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning through the Creative IndustriesChapter 8: Don Cherry's "You People" Rant: A Critical Race Approach to Understanding Corporate Nationalism, Audience Commodification, and Cultural Citizenship - Ryan J. PhillipsChapter 9: When Black History Month Media Posts Double as Pedagogical Tools: Appraising Existing BHM Coverage and Proposing Future Directions - Selina L. MudavanhuChapter 10: Applying Critical Creativity: Navigating Tensions Between Art & Business in the Creative City - Brandon McFarlaneChapter 11: Transforming Industry Standards: Tensions between Social Change and Media Production Education - Ki Wight GlossaryContributor Biographies

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Book SynopsisRowdy Entrepreneurs and Insecure Dinosaurs is about invention and innovation in the context of postmodern society and information economy. It applies "popular culture" theory to such companies as Virgin, Microsoft, and Apple, to analyse their innovation strategies. This is the first book of its kind that mingles popular culture theory with innovation theory and entrepreneurship. It is written, true to the spirit of popular culture, in a lively style with abundant popular cultural references, and textual and visual puns.

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Book SynopsisWhy have both pop and politics in Britain become the preserve of an unrepresentative elite? From chav-pop pantomimes to retro-chauvinist 'landfill indie', the bland, homogenous and compromised nature of the current 'alternative' sector reflects the interests of a similarly complacent and privileged political establishment. In particular, political and media policing of female social and sexual autonomy, through the neglected but significant gendered dimensions of the discourse surrounding 'chavs', has been accompanied by a similar restriction and regulation of the expression of working-class femininity in music. This book traces the progress of this cultural clampdown over the past twenty years.Trade Review"Traces the links between politics and pop music in order to interpret why we are where we are, in terms of class, gender and representation and the wider grim political situation we find ourselves in. The book made me angry and a bit nostalgic, but probably nostalgic for something that was never fully realised." --Emmy-Kate Montrose, formerly of Kenickie

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