Banding together Lena, Jennifer C
2012., 20120212, 2012, 2012-02-12
eBook
Why do some music styles gain mass popularity while others thrive in small niches? Banding Together explores this question and reveals the attributes that together explain the growth of ...twentieth-century American popular music. Drawing on a vast array of examples from sixty musical styles--ranging from rap and bluegrass to death metal and South Texas polka, and including several created outside the United States--Jennifer Lena uncovers the shared grammar that allows us to understand the cultural language and evolution of popular music.
Nordic Genre Film Gustafsson, Tommy; Kääpä, Pietari; Hakola, Outi ...
05/2015
eBook, Book
A transnational comparative approach to contemporary popular Nordic genre film. Nordic Genre Film offers a transnational approach to studying contemporary genre production in Nordic cinema. It ...discusses a range of internationally renowned examples, from Nordic noir such as the television show The Bridge and films like Insomnia to high concept 'video generation' productions such as Iron Sky . Other contributions focus on road movies, the horror film, autobiographical films, historical epics and pornography. These are contextualized by discussion of their position in their respective national film and media histories as well as their influence on other Nordic countries and beyond. By highlighting similarities and differences between the countries, the book combines industrial perspectives and in depth discussion of specific films, while also offering historical perspectives on each genre as comes to production, distribution and reception of popular contemporary genre film.
Genre and Television Mittell, Jason
2004, 20040802, 2004-06-01, 20040618, 2004-08-02
eBook, Book
Genre and Television proposes a new understanding of television genres as cultural categories, offering a set of in-depth historical and critical examinations to explore five key aspects of ...television genre: history, industry, audience, text, and genre mixing. Drawing on well-known television programs from Dragnet to The
Simpsons, this book provides a new model of genre historiography and illustrates how genres are at work within nearly every facet of television-from policy decisions to production techniques to audience practices. Ultimately, the book argues that through analyzing how television genre operates as a cultural practice, we can better comprehend how television actively shapes our social world.
The shape of the signifier Michaels, Walter Benn; Michaels, Walter Benn
2004., 20131031, 2013, 2004, c2004., 2004-01-01
eBook, Book
The Shape of the Signifieris a critique of recent theory--primarily literary but also cultural and political. Bringing together previously unconnected strands of Michaels's thought--from "Against ...Theory" toOur America--it anatomizes what's fundamentally at stake when we think of literature in terms of the experience of the reader rather than the intention of the author, and when we substitute the question of who people are for the question of what they believe.
With signature virtuosity, Michaels shows how the replacement of ideological difference (we believe different things) with identitarian difference (we speak different languages, we have different bodies and different histories) organizes the thinking of writers from Richard Rorty to Octavia Butler to Samuel Huntington to Kathy Acker. He then examines how this shift produces the narrative logic of texts ranging from Toni Morrison'sBelovedto Michael Hardt and Toni Negri'sEmpire. As with everything Michaels writes,The Shape of the Signifieris sure to leave controversy and debate in its wake.
Genre theory in the past few years has contributed immensely to our understanding of the way discourse is used in academic, professional and institutional contexts. However, its development has been ...constrained by the nature and design of its applications, which have invariably focused on language teaching and learning, or communication training and consultation. This has led to the use of simplified and idealised genres. In contrast to this, the real world of discourse is complex, dynamic and unpredictable. This tension between the real world of written discourse and its representation in applied genre-based literature is the main theme of this book. The book addresses this theme from the perspectives of four rather different worlds: the world of reality, the world of private intentions, the world of analysis and the world of applications. Using examples from a range of situations including advertising, business, academia, economics, law, book introductions, reports, media and fundraising, Bhatia uses discourse analysis to move genre theory away from educational contexts and into the real world. Introduction Overview: Perspectives on Discourse The World of Reality The World of Private Intentions The World of Analysis The World of Applications References
Be resilient! Today, we hear this line in almost any context. The term resilience is among the most repeated buzzwords. But why, simply, do we need to be resilient? Hamideh Mahdiani presents answers ...to this question by challenging a reductionistic understanding of resilience from single disciplinary perspectives; by questioning the dominance of life sciences in defining an age-old concept; and by problematizing the neglected role of life writing in fostering resilience. In so doing, through a multidisciplinary frame of reference, the book works with various examples from life writing and life sciences, and testifies to the focal role of narrative studies in resilience research.
Technological innovation has long threatened the printed book, but
ultimately, most digital alternatives to the codex have been
onscreen replications. While a range of critics have debated the
...benefits and dangers of this media technology, contemporary and
avant-garde writers have offered more nuanced considerations.
Taking up works from Andy Warhol, Kevin Young, Don DeLillo, and
Hari Kunzru, Archival Fictions considers how these writers
have constructed a speculative history of media technology through
formal experimentation. Although media technologies have determined
the extent of what can be written, recorded, and remembered in the
immediate aftermath of print's hegemony, Paul Benzon argues that
literary form provides a vital means for critical engagement with
the larger contours of media history. Drawing on approaches from
media poetics, film studies, and the digital humanities, this
interdisciplinary study demonstrates how authors who engage
technology through form continue to imagine new roles for print
literature across the late twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries.
