Superhero Rhetoric from Exceptionalism to Globalization

Superhero Rhetoric from Exceptionalism to Globalization PDF Author: Michael Arthur Soares
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1666950319
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Superhero Rhetoric from Exceptionalism to Globalization: Up, Up and ...Abroad examines superhero narratives through the lens of American rhetoric and globalization. Michael Arthur Soares illustrates how deeply intertwined superhero narratives are with American political culture by analyzing, on the one hand, the rhetoric of American exceptionalism and the representation of American presidents in superhero narratives and, on the other, the prevalence of superhero rhetoric in speeches by American politicians. Turning toward the global mobility of the superhero genre, Soares then offers further insight into the ways in which cultural contexts inform transformations of superheroes and their narratives around the world and how American filmmakers have adjusted their narratives to guarantee their global reach and ability to place films in the global marketplace. Finally, the author considers real-life examples of licensed superhero iconography embodied by individuals around the world who seek to make change in their communities. Ultimately, the chapters examine the journey of superhero rhetoric and how it reaches out to global audiences, across cultural borders and back again.

Superhero Rhetoric from Exceptionalism to Globalization

Superhero Rhetoric from Exceptionalism to Globalization PDF Author: Michael Arthur Soares
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1666950319
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219

Get Book Here

Book Description
Superhero Rhetoric from Exceptionalism to Globalization: Up, Up and ...Abroad examines superhero narratives through the lens of American rhetoric and globalization. Michael Arthur Soares illustrates how deeply intertwined superhero narratives are with American political culture by analyzing, on the one hand, the rhetoric of American exceptionalism and the representation of American presidents in superhero narratives and, on the other, the prevalence of superhero rhetoric in speeches by American politicians. Turning toward the global mobility of the superhero genre, Soares then offers further insight into the ways in which cultural contexts inform transformations of superheroes and their narratives around the world and how American filmmakers have adjusted their narratives to guarantee their global reach and ability to place films in the global marketplace. Finally, the author considers real-life examples of licensed superhero iconography embodied by individuals around the world who seek to make change in their communities. Ultimately, the chapters examine the journey of superhero rhetoric and how it reaches out to global audiences, across cultural borders and back again.

The Superhero Multiverse

The Superhero Multiverse PDF Author: Lorna Piatti-Farnell
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793624607
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
The Superhero Multiverse focuses on the evolving meanings of the superhero icon in 21st-century film and popular media, with an emphasis on re-adapting, re-imagining, and re-making. With its focus on multimedia and transmedia transformations, The Superhero Multiverse pivots on two important points: firstly, it reflects on the core concerns of the superhero narrative—including the relationship between ‘superhero comics’ and ‘superhero films’, the comics roots of superhero media, matters of canon and hybridity, and issues of recycling and stereotyping in superhero films and media texts. Secondly, it considers how these intersecting textual and cultural preoccupations are intrinsic to the process of remaking and re-adapting superheroes, and brings attention to multiple ways of materializing these iconic figures in our contemporary context.

Superheroes and Masculinity

Superheroes and Masculinity PDF Author: Sean Parson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498591507
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
Superheroes and Masculinity: Unmasking the Gender Performance of Heroism explores how heteropatriarchal representations of gender are portrayed within superhero comics, film, and television. The contributors examine how hegemonic masculinity has been continually perpetuated and reinforced within the superhero genre and unpack concise critiques of specific superhero representations, the industry, and the fan base at large. However, Superheroes and Masculinity also argues that possibilities of resistance and change are embedded within these problematic portrayals. To this end, several chapters explore alternative portrayals of queerness within superhero representations and read the hegemonic masculinity of various characters against the grain to produce queer possibilities. Ultimately, this collection argues that the quest to unmask how gender operates within superheroes is a crucial one.

Curious about George

Curious about George PDF Author: Rae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496837371
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
In 1940, Hans Augusto Rey and Margret Rey built two bikes, packed what they could, and fled wartime Paris. Among the possessions they escaped with was a manuscript that would later become one of the most celebrated books in children’s literature—Curious George. Since his debut in 1941, the mischievous icon has only grown in popularity. After being captured in Africa by the Man in the Yellow Hat and taken to live in the big city’s zoo, Curious George became a symbol of curiosity, adventure, and exploration. In Curious about George: Curious George, Cultural Icons, Colonialism, and US Exceptionalism, author Rae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre argues that the beloved character also performs within a narrative of racism, colonialism, and heroism. Using theories of colonial and rhetorical studies to explain why cultural icons like Curious George are able to avoid criticism, Schwartz-DuPre investigates the ways these characters operate as capacious figures, embodying and circulating the narratives that construct them, and effectively argues that discourses about George provide a rich training ground for children to learn US citizenship and become innocent supporters of colonial American exceptionalism. By drawing on postcolonial theory, children’s criticisms, science and technology studies, and nostalgia, Schwartz-DuPre’s critical reading explains the dismissal of the monkey’s 1941 abduction from Africa and enslavement in the US, described in the first book, by illuminating two powerful roles he currently holds: essential STEM ambassador at a time when science and technology is central to global competitiveness and as a World War II refugee who offers a “deficient” version of the Holocaust while performing model US immigrant. Curious George’s twin heroic roles highlight racist science and an Americanized Holocaust narrative. By situating George as a representation of enslaved Africans and Holocaust refugees, Curious about George illuminates the danger of contemporary zero-sum identity politics, the colonization of marginalized identities, and racist knowledge production. Importantly, it demonstrates the ways in which popular culture can be harnessed both to promote colonial benevolence and to present possibilities for resistance.

American Exceptionalism in the Age of Globalization

American Exceptionalism in the Age of Globalization PDF Author: William V. Spanos
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791472903
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Connects the American exceptionalist ethos to the violence in Vietnam and the Middle East.

The Pedagogy of Pop

The Pedagogy of Pop PDF Author: Edward A. Janak
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0739176005
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Media competes with public schools in terms of student engagement and time. However, the two needn't be mutually exclusive. The Pedagogy of Pop: Theoretical and Practical Strategies for Success discusses a variety of strategies and approaches for using social and mass media as tools through which teachers might improve schooling. While there is a vast body of literature in this field, editors Edward A. Janak and Denise Blum have created a text which differs in two substantive ways: scope and sequence. In terms of scope, this work is unique in two facets: first, it presents both theory and practice in one volume, bridging the two worlds; and second, it includes lessons from secondary and postsecondary classrooms, allowing teachers on all levels to learn from each other. In terms of sequence, The Pedagogy of Pop draws on lessons from both historical and contemporary practice. The introductory section of Janak and Blum's collection presents a pair of papers that use somewhat different approaches to examine the historical roots of contemporary critique. Part I presents a series of chapters designed to provide guidelines and theories through which educators on all levels can think about their practice, focusing more on the "why" of their approach than the "how." Part II presents a more "hands-on" approach by sharing a variety of specific strategies for incorporating pop culture in all its forms (technology, music, television, video games, etc.) in both secondary and postsecondary classrooms. The conclusion shows the praxis of teaching with popular culture, presenting a counterpoint to current thinking as well as a case study of the best of what can happen when popular culture is applied effectively.

Chronicles from the Future

Chronicles from the Future PDF Author: Paul Amadeus Dienach
Publisher: This Way Out Productions
ISBN: 9786188221819
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
In 1921, Paul Amadeus Dienach, a Swiss-Austrian teacher with fragile health, falls into a one-year-long coma. During this time, his consciousness slides into the future and enters the body of another man in 3906 A.D. When Dienach awakens from his coma, he finds himself back in 1922. Knowing that he doesn't have much time left, he writes a diary, recording whatever he could remember from his amazing experience: the mankind's history in the forthcoming centuries, from the nightmare of overpopulation and World Wars up until the world-changing globalisation, the radical new administration system, the colony on Mars and the next human evolutionary stage. Without any close friends and relatives to entrust, he doesn't say a word to anyone out of fear of being branded a lunatic. Before he dies, he hands his diary to his favourite student, George Papachatzis, later prominent Professor of Law and Rector of Panteion University of Greece.The diary circulates as hidden knowledge amongst high ranking masons in the lodges of Athens. In 1972, professor Papachatzis, despite an intense dispute, decides to publish Dienach's diary in Greek. Paul Dienach was not an author, poet, or professional writer. Rather, he was an ordinary man who kept a journal, never with the expectation that it would be published. This unique and controversial book, a universal legacy, is now carefully edited, translated and available to everyone. This is the history of our future! We deliver it to you."

Thinking Dead

Thinking Dead PDF Author: Murali Balaji
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739183834
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Zombies are everywhere these days. We are consuming zombies as much as they are said to be consuming us in mediated apocalyptic scenarios on popular television shows, video game franchises and movies. The “zombie industry” generates billions a year through media texts and other cultural manifestations (zombie races and zombie-themed parks, to name a few). Zombies, like vampires, werewolves, witches and wizards, have become both big dollars for cultural producers and the subject of audience fascination and fetishization. With popular television shows such as AMC’s The Walking Dead (based on the popular graphic novel) and movie franchises such as the ones pioneered by George Romero, global fascination with zombies does not show signs of diminishing. In The Thinking Dead: What the Zombie Apocalypse Means, edited by Murali Balaji, scholars ask why our culture has becomes so fascinated by the zombie apocalypse. Essays address this question from a range of theoretical perspectives that tie our consumption of zombies to larger narratives of race, gender, sexuality, politics, economics and the end of the world. Thinking Dead brings together an array of media and cultural studies scholars whose contributions to understanding our obsession with zombies will far outlast the current trends of zombie popularity.

Disrobed

Disrobed PDF Author: Syl Tang
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442271000
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
We may not often think of our clothes as having a function beyond covering our naked bodies and keeping us a little safer from the elements. But to discount the enormous influence of clothing on anything from economic cycles to the future of water scarcity is to ignore the greater meaning of the garments we put on our backs. Disrobed vividly considers the role that clothing plays in everything from natural disasters to climate change to terrorism to geopolitics to agribusiness. Chapter by chapter, Tang takes the reader on an unusual journey, telling stories and asking questions that most consumers have never considered about their clothing. Why do banker’s wives sell off their clothes and how does that presage a recession? How is clothing linked to ethanol and starvation on the African continent? Could RFID in clothing save the lives of millions of people in earthquakes around the world? This book takes an everyday item and considers it in a way that readers may not have previously thought possible. It tackles topics relevant to today, everything from fakes in the museums to farm-to-table eating, and answers questions about how we can anticipate and change our world in areas as far-reaching as the environment, politics, and the clash of civilizations occurring between countries. Much like other pop economics books have done before, the stories are easily retold in water-cooler style, allowing them to be thoughtfully considered, argued, and discussed.

Commercial Nationalism

Commercial Nationalism PDF Author: Zala Volcic
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137500999
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
This book intervenes in discussions of the fate of nationalism and national identity by exploring the relationship between state appropriation of marketing and branding strategies on the one hand, and, on the other, the commercial mobilization of nationalist discourses.