The Uses of the Past in Contemporary Western Popular Culture

The Uses of the Past in Contemporary Western Popular Culture PDF Author: Tobias Becker
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031547403
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description

The Uses of the Past in Contemporary Western Popular Culture

The Uses of the Past in Contemporary Western Popular Culture PDF Author: Tobias Becker
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031547403
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Uses of the Past in Contemporary Western Popular Culture

The Uses of the Past in Contemporary Western Popular Culture PDF Author: Tobias Becker
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9783031547393
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the different ways in which the past remains present in Western popular culture in the twenty-first century. It combines theoretical analyses with case study-based chapters focusing on examples from Britain, the US, and Germany, among other countries. In doing so, it pushes beyond a simplistic and monolithic conception of what ‘nostalgia’ is to allow for a more nuanced and varied conceptualisation of this phenomenon, and to also incorporate other ways of understanding the invoking or inclusion of different histories within cultural objects, formats, and practices.

Zombies in Western Culture

Zombies in Western Culture PDF Author: John Vervaeke
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 178374331X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description
Why has the zombie become such a pervasive figure in twenty-first-century popular culture? John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro and Filip Miscevic seek to answer this question by arguing that particular aspects of the zombie, common to a variety of media forms, reflect a crisis in modern Western culture. The authors examine the essential features of the zombie, including mindlessness, ugliness and homelessness, and argue that these reflect the outlook of the contemporary West and its attendant zeitgeists of anxiety, alienation, disconnection and disenfranchisement. They trace the relationship between zombies and the theme of secular apocalypse, demonstrating that the zombie draws its power from being a perversion of the Christian mythos of death and resurrection. Symbolic of a lost Christian worldview, the zombie represents a world that can no longer explain itself, nor provide us with instructions for how to live within it. The concept of 'domicide' or the destruction of home is developed to describe the modern crisis of meaning that the zombie both represents and reflects. This is illustrated using case studies including the relocation of the Anishinaabe of the Grassy Narrows First Nation, and the upheaval of population displacement in the Hellenistic period. Finally, the authors invoke and reformulate symbols of the four horseman of the apocalypse as rhetorical analogues to frame those aspects of contemporary collapse that elucidate the horror of the zombie. Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis is required reading for anyone interested in the phenomenon of zombies in contemporary culture. It will also be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience including students and scholars of culture studies, semiotics, philosophy, religious studies, eschatology, anthropology, Jungian studies, and sociology.

Protest, Popular Culture and Tradition in Modern and Contemporary Western Europe

Protest, Popular Culture and Tradition in Modern and Contemporary Western Europe PDF Author: Ilaria Favretto
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137507373
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Mock funerals, effigy parading, smearing with eggs and tomatoes, pot-banging and Carnival street theatre, arson and ransacking: all these seemingly archaic forms of action have been regular features of modern European protest, from the 19th to the 21st century. In a wide chronological and geographical framework, this book analyses the uses, meanings, functions and reactivations of folk imagery, behaviour and language in modern collective action. The authors examine the role of protest actors as diverse as peasants, liberal movements, nationalist and separatist parties, anarchists, workers, students, right-wing activists and the global justice movement. So-called traditional repertoires have long been described as residual and obsolete. This book challenges the conventional distinction between pre-industrial and post-1789 forms of collective action, which continues to operate as a powerful dichotomy in the understanding of protest, and casts new light on rituals and symbolic performances that, albeit poorly understood and deciphered, are integral to our protest repertoire.

Teaching the Global Middle Ages

Teaching the Global Middle Ages PDF Author: Geraldine Heng
Publisher: Modern Language Association
ISBN: 1603295194
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
While globalization is a modern phenomenon, premodern people were also interconnected in early forms of globalism, sharing merchandise, technology, languages, and stories over long distances. Looking across civilizations, this volume takes a broad view of the Middle Ages in order to foster new habits of thinking and develop a multilayered, critical sense of the past. The essays in this volume reach across disciplinary lines to bring insights from music, theater, religion, ecology, museums, and the history of disease into the literature classroom. The contributors provide guidance on texts such as the Thousand and One Nights, Sunjata, Benjamin of Tudela's Book of Travels, and the Malay Annals and on topics such as hotels, maps, and camels. They propose syllabus recommendations, present numerous digital resources, and offer engaging class activities and discussion questions. Ultimately, they provide tools that will help students evaluate popular representations of the Middle Ages and engage with the dynamics of past, present, and future world relationships.

Contemporary Media Culture and the Remnants of a Colonial Past

Contemporary Media Culture and the Remnants of a Colonial Past PDF Author: Kent A. Ono
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820479392
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Contemporary Media Culture and the Remnants of a Colonial Past examines contemporary representations of colonialism, by developing a historically and culturally specific theory of neocolonialism in U.S. media culture. Noting how colonialism never officially ended in the United States, Kent A. Ono draws together race, gender, sexuality, and nation to examine neocolonialism in popular media narratives. The book asks, «What are the lingering traces within contemporary culture that provide evidence not only of what colonialism was but also of what it continues to be today?» Offering five case studies on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the sale of the Seattle Mariners, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Pocahontas, and Star Trek: The Next Generation--and providing current media examples in the introduction and conclusion, the book documents the persistence of colonialism in media culture. White vigilantism, prototypical colonial rescue plots, and cloaked and not-so-hidden anxieties about racial and national miscegenation all contribute towards a continuation of colonialism and a neocolonial mind-set. The book's critical examination from a historical and cultural perspective makes it possible to alter colonialism for future generations.

Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents

Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents PDF Author: Wu Hung
Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art
ISBN: 0870706470
Category : Art, Chinese
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
Invaluable resource for anyone who wants to understand contemporary Chinese art, one of the most fascinating art scenes of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Time Passages

Time Passages PDF Author: George Lipsitz
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9781452905785
Category : Mass media
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description


American Cultural History

American Cultural History PDF Author: Eric Avila
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019020060X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
The iconic images of Uncle Sam and Marilyn Monroe, or the "fireside chats" of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the oratory of Martin Luther King, Jr.: these are the words, images, and sounds that populate American cultural history. From the Boston Tea Party to the Dodgers, from the blues to Andy Warhol, dime novels to Disneyland, the history of American culture tells us how previous generations of Americans have imagined themselves, their nation, and their relationship to the world and its peoples. This Very Short Introduction recounts the history of American culture and its creation by diverse social and ethnic groups. In doing so, it emphasizes the historic role of culture in relation to broader social, political, and economic developments. Across the lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality, as well as language, region, and religion, diverse Americans have forged a national culture with a global reach, inventing stories that have shaped a national identity and an American way of life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Re-Orienting the Fairy Tale

Re-Orienting the Fairy Tale PDF Author: Mayako Murai
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814345379
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 493

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Book Description
Readers will find inspiration and new directions in the cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approaches to fairy tales provided by Re-Orienting the Fairy Tale.