Author: William J. Birnes
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0765328852
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 416
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Book Description
"In this sequel to The Haunting of America and The Haunting of Twentieth-Century America, national bestselling authors Joel Martin and William J. Birnes set the stage for one of the great intellectual and spiritual awakenings that is currently challenging traditional belief systems. Reaching back into events that rocked the twentieth century, the authors show that, though denying the importance of a spiritual component in national policy, even the most conservative of governments have based social and financial policy decisions on a profound belief in the existence of the paranormal. The Haunting of Twenty-First-Century America is unlike any American history you will ever read--it posits that not only is the paranormal more normal than most people think, but that it is driving current events to a new "Fourth Culture" of the twenty-first century"--
Author: Amy Lawrence
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781496838131
Category : Documentary-style television programs
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
The first scholarly study of the frighteningly popular paranormal reality television genre.
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004698329
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
The Gothic and Twenty-First-Century American Popular Culture examines the gothic mode deployed in a variety of texts that touch upon inherently US American themes, demonstrating its versatility and ubiquity across genres and popular media. The volume is divided into four main thematic sections, spanning representations related to ethnic minorities, bodily monstrosity, environmental anxieties, and haunted technology. The chapters explore both overtly gothic texts and pop culture artifacts that, despite not being widely considered strictly so, rely on gothic strategies and narrative devices.
Author: Amy Lawrence
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496838149
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
Through American history, often in times of crisis, there have been periodic outbreaks of obsession with the paranormal. Between 2004 and 2019, over six dozen documentary-style series dealing with paranormal subject matter premiered on television in the United States. Combining the stylistic traits of horror with earnest accounts of what are claimed to be actual events, “paranormal reality” incorporates subject matter formerly characterized as occult or supernatural into the established category of reality TV. Despite the high number of programs and their evident popularity, paranormal reality television has to date received little critical attention. Ghost Channels: Paranormal Reality Television and the Haunting of Twenty-First-Century America provides an overview of the paranormal reality television genre, its development, and its place in television history. Conducting in-depth analyses of over thirty paranormal television series, including such shows as Ghost Hunters, Celebrity Ghost Stories, and Long Island Medium, author Amy Lawrence suggests these programs reveal much about Americans’ contemporary fears. Through her close readings, Lawrence asks, “What are these shows trying to tell us?” and “What do they communicate about contemporary culture if we take them seriously and watch them closely?” Ridiculed by nearly everyone, paranormal reality TV shows—with their psychics, ghost hunters, and haunted houses—provide unique insights into contemporary American culture. Half-horror, half-documentary realism, these shows expose deep-seated questions about class, race, gender, the value of technology, the failure of institutions, and what it means to be American in the twenty-first century.
Author: Joshua Miller
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108838278
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347
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Book Description
This volume explores the most exciting trends in 21st century US fiction's genres, themes, and concepts.
Author: Anneke Lubkowitz
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110678640
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
This study investigates the figure of haunting in the New Nature Writing. It begins with a historical survey of nature writing and traces how it came to represent an ideal of ‘natural’ space as empty of human history and social conflict. Building on a theoretical framework which combines insights from ecocriticism and spatial theory, the author explores the spatial dimensions of haunting and ‘hauntology’ and shows how 21st-century writers draw on a Gothic repertoire of seemingly supernatural occurrences and spectral imagery to portray ‘natural’ space as disturbed, uncanny and socially contested. Iain Sinclair and Robert Macfarlane are revealed to apply psychogeography’s interest in ‘hidden histories’ and haunted places to spaces associated with ‘wilderness’ and ‘the countryside’. Kathleen Jamie’s allusions to the Gothic are put in relation to her feminist re-writing of ‘the outdoors’, and John Burnside’s use of haunting is shown to dismantle fictions of ‘the far north’. This book provides not only a discussion of a wide range of factual and fictional narratives of the present but also an analysis of the intertextual dialogue with the Romantic tradition which enfolds in these texts.
Author: Christopher Bigsby
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108419585
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 235
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Book Description
Introduces nine exciting and talented playwrights who have emerged in twenty-first century America, exploring issues of race, gender and society.
Author: William J. Birnes
Publisher: Forge Books
ISBN: 1429997370
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 646
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Book Description
In this sequel to The Haunting of America, national bestselling authors Joel Martin and William J. Birnes bring up to the present the story of how paranormal events influenced and sometimes even drove political events. In unearthing the roots of America's fascination with the ghosts, goblins, and demons that possess our imaginations and nightmares, Martin and Birnes show how the paranormal has driven America's political, public, and militarypolicies. The authors examine the social history of the United States through the lens of the paranormal and investigate the spiritual events that inspired momentous national decisions: UFOs that frightened the nation's military into launching nuclear bomber squadrons toward the Soviet Union, out-of-body experiences used to gather sensitive intelligence on other countries, and even spirits summoned to communicate with living politicians. The Haunting of Twentieth-Century America is a thrilling evidencebased exploration of the often unexpected influences of the paranormal on science, medicine, law, the government, the military, psychology, theology, death and dying, spirituality, and pop culture. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Author: Jessica Bruder
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393249328
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
The inspiration for Chloé Zhao's 2020 Golden Lion award-winning film starring Frances McDormand. "People who thought the 2008 financial collapse was over a long time ago need to meet the people Jessica Bruder got to know in this scorching, beautifully written, vivid, disturbing (and occasionally wryly funny) book." —Rebecca Solnit From the beet fields of North Dakota to the campgrounds of California to Amazon’s CamperForce program in Texas, employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older adults. These invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in RVs and modified vans, forming a growing community of nomads. Nomadland tells a revelatory tale of the dark underbelly of the American economy—one which foreshadows the precarious future that may await many more of us. At the same time, it celebrates the exceptional resilience and creativity of these Americans who have given up ordinary rootedness to survive, but have not given up hope.
Author: Richard Perez
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030398358
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 651
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Book Description
The Palgrave Handbook of Magical Realism in the Twenty-First Century examines magical realism in literatures from around the globe. Featuring twenty-seven essays written by leading scholars, this anthology argues that literary expressions of magical realism proliferate globally in the twenty-first century due to travel and migrations, the shrinking of time and space, and the growing encroachment of human life on nature. In this global context, magical realism addresses twenty-first-century politics, aesthetics, identity, and social/national formations where contact between and within cultures has exponentially increased, altering how communities and nations imagine themselves. This text assembles a group of critics throughout the world—the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Australia—who employ multiple theoretical approaches to examine the different ways magical realism in literature has transitioned to a global practice; thus, signaling a new stage in the history and development of the genre.
