Popular Culture

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Is Harpo Free?

Examines how philosophical concepts like free will, personal identity, and goodness are given an artistic life in films and television programs.

From Blues to Beyoncé

Explores how Black women have continually used sound to convey stories and forge community across generations.

The Biggest Thing in Show Business

A freewheeling, nonlinear exploration of the performing duo and their decade-long collaboration from 1946 to 1956.

The Republican Hero

Explores the question of whether heroes matter in the modern republic.

Win or Die

This entertaining and accessible guide shows readers how to turn danger into opportunity, even when dragons threaten.

Torturous Etiquettes

Explores the “torture” of mannered behavior and the prevalence of etiquette as a theme in classical and contemporary Hollywood and European cinema.

Tourists and Trade

How two roadside craft shops in upstate New York transformed American crafts into a fine art.

Ducktails, Drive-ins, and Broken Hearts

An unflinching look at the triumphs and tragedies of '50s rock and roll, from the biggest stars, like Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins, to those who barely grabbed the spotlight.

Tommy, Trauma, and Postwar Youth Culture

The cultural history of one of rock's greatest masterpieces told through the eyes of its creator.

Blues on Stage

Tells the story of classic blues singers from Ma Rainey to Bessie Smith.

Ways of the Hand

A visual and narrative memoir of a lifetime's encounters with 112 trendsetters, musicians, politicians, writers, and ordinary people by a noted folklorist-photographer.

New York's Great Lost Ballparks

Tells the story of New York's playing grounds, teams, and ballparks of yesteryear.

The Hard Sell of Paradise

Traces the complex and contradictory representations of Hawai’i in popular film and television programs from the 1930s to the 1970s.

Nietzsche in Hollywood

Argues that Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch was a central concern of filmmakers in the 1920s and 1930s.

No Jurisdiction

A deeply personal study of post-9/11 film that exposes how genre can frame the shifting meanings of the War on Terror and its impact on American law and culture.

Screening #MeToo

Considers how Hollywood films since the 1960s have both reflected and shaped attitudes toward rape and sexual violence.

Michael Jackson and the Quandary of a Black Identity

A close examination of the complexity inherent in Michael Jackson's ambiguous racial identity.

Race and the Suburbs in American Film

Explores how suburban space and the body are racialized in American film.

Perpetual Movement

Offers both a production history and a close analysis, with a chapter for each of the film's eleven shots.

Was It Yesterday?

Explores how nostalgia operates in contemporary US film and television.

Tastemakers and Tastemaking

Considers how and why taste persists in the analysis of Mexican film and television by looking at key figures and their impact on the curation of violence.

Giallo!

Traces the giallo mystery/horror genre from its genesis in Italian cinema of the 1960s and 1970s to its contemporary place in the global cult-film canon.

Age of Shōjo

Examines the role that Japanese girls’ magazine culture played during the twentieth century in the creation and use of the notion of shōjo, the cultural identity of adolescent Japanese girls.

Immanent Frames

Explores a growing number of films and filmmakers that challenge the strict boundaries between belief and unbelief.

Ripping England!

Examines an all too often neglected period of postwar British cinema and popular culture.

Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes

Argues that Indigenous hip hop is the latest and newest assertion of Indigenous sovereignty throughout Indigenous North America.

Passionate Detachments

Investigates the cultural value of film violence.

Gestures of Love

Examines movie romance in light of our emotional bond to the actors and characters on screen.

Dark Affinities, Dark Imaginaries

A story of self, braided to a story of American culture.

Ghost Faces

Combines psychoanalysis, queer theory, masculinity studies, and cultural studies to explore contemporary manhood in film.

Lessons Learned from Popular Culture

Informative and entertaining introduction to the study of popular culture.

The Sitcom Reader, Second Edition

Updated version of an engaging overview of the television situation comedy.

Immigrant Protest

Explores how political activism, art, and popular culture challenge the discrimination and injustice faced by “illegal” and displaced peoples.

The Sage Returns

An interdisciplinary exploration of the contemporary Confucian revival.

Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors

Examines the complexities and contradictions that arise when the monsters in the movies are children.

B Is for Bad Cinema

Considers films that lurk on the boundaries of acceptability in taste, style, and politics.

A Wizard of Their Age

Edited by Cecilia Konchar Farr
Subjects: Literature

A collection of student essays that captures the passionate engagement their generation brings to the Harry Potter phenomenon.

How to Escape

Passionate and rollicking personal and intellectual essays by philosopher Crispin Sartwell.

The Transatlantic Gaze

Tracks the influence of Italian cinema on American film from the postwar period to the present.

Endtimes?

A groundbreaking study of ten difficult years in the life of America's most important newspaper.

Shinohara Pops!

Surveys the fifty-year career of the avant-garde artist Ushio Shinohara.

Fashion Talks

Essays on the politics of everyday style.

Hitchcock at the Source

Considers the ways in which Alfred Hitchcock adapted and transformed a variety of literary works—novels, plays, and short stories—into film.

Excess and Masculinity in Asian Cultural Productions

Innovative analysis of the relationship of gender to East Asian economic development.

Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination

An authoritative and comprehensive guide to cinema’s first true blockbuster.

Roman Candle

A multilayered portrait of this brash, gifted artist, whose restless voice and spirit seem as alive today as ever.

In the Hamptons Too

Tales of the sometimes rich, sometimes famous, but always quirky residents of one of America’s best-known summer colonies, as told by the editor and publisher of Dan’s Papers, the area’s free weekly newspaper.

Second Takes

The first collection of essays devoted to the phenomenon of the film sequel.

Paradigm City

Materially grounded analysis of contemporary film, literature, and music in Hong Kong that resists the superficial stereotypes of the “global city. ”

Vampire God

By Mary Y. Hallab
Subjects: Literature

Examines the enormous popular appeal of vampires from early Greek and Slavic folklore to present-day popular culture.

Perpetual Adolescence

Explores the arrested development of American culture.

Hetero

Uncovers the queer nature of heterosexuality on film.

The Oprah Affect

Essays explore the broad cultural impact of Oprah’s Book Club.

The Comedy of Philosophy

Melds philosophical analysis with early cinematic history to develop a fresh theory of the notion of comedy.

Beer, Babes, and Balls

Looks at contemporary sports talk radio and its relations to both traditional and newer forms of masculinity.

Out of Play

A revealing look at gender issues in contemporary sport.

Apocalyptic Dread

The power and presence of dread in recent American cinema.

Speaking the Lower Frequencies

Shows how using texts from popular culture in the classroom can help young people to become critical consumers of media without losing the pleasure they derive from it.

Sites of Autopsy in Contemporary Culture

Explores the role and function of the autopsy in Western culture, from Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lecture to The X-Files and CSI.

Reading Oprah

An analysis of how Oprah's Book Club has changed America's reading habits.

Fanning the Flames

A fascinating look at fans of a variety of popular culture phenomena in Japan.

Funny, It Doesn't Sound Jewish

Documents the influence of Jewish music on American popular song.

Film Voices

Interviews with prominent filmmakers, actors, and others on the art, craft, and business of moviemaking.

Celluloid Couches, Cinematic Clients

Looks at how therapy and the "talking cure" have been portrayed in the movies.

Celluloid Nationalism and Other Melodramas

Explores issues of representation and rebellion in Mexican and Mexican American cinema.

Athletic Intruders

Explores women's place in sport and exercise from a socioculture perspective.

The Best Olympics Ever?

Uses the Sydney Olympics as a prism through which to explore recent Olympic scandals, media coverage, reform efforts, and controversies.

Earthbodies

Shows how our cultural misconceptions about the body distort its capacities and lead to personal and social ills.

Shakespeare in the Cinema

A comprehensive look at film adaptations of Shakespeare's plays.

Popular Modernity in America

Examines a wide variety of cultural and technological phenomena that have helped shape American popular culture over the last 150 years.

The Second Century of Cinema

Contemplates the future of cinema in light of emerging digital technologies and new systems of distribution.

Film Genre 2000

New essays by prominent film scholars address recent developments in American genre filmmaking.

The Films of Fred Zinnemann

Offers new perspectives on the work of a major filmmaker while making a significant contribution to the study of American cinema.

Passport to Hollywood

Examines popular films made in Hollywood by European directors, offering a fresh take on the much-debated issue of the "great divide" between modernism and mass culture.

Popular Culture and Political Change in Modern America

This book is a collection of essays dealing with the ways in which specific popular entertainment media, mass consumer products, and popular movements affect politics and political culture in the United ...

The Remaking of Pittsburgh

What forces transformed a community in which industrial workers and other citizens exercised a real measure of power over their lives into a metropolis whose inhabitants were utterly dependent on Big ...