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Names as Metaphors in Shakespeare’s Comedies
Grant W. Smith, Eastern Washington University
Availability: In stock
371pp. ¦ $73 £54 €61
'Names as Metaphors in Shakespeare’s Comedies' presents a comprehensive study of names in Shakespeare’s comedies. Although names are used in daily speech as simple designators, often with minimal regard for semantic or phonological suggestiveness, their coinage is always based on analogy. They are words (i.e., signs) borrowed from previous referents and contexts, and applied to new referents. Thus, in the literary use of language, names are figurative inventions and have measurable thematic significance: they evoke an association of attributes between two or more referents, contextualize each work of literature within its time, and reflect the artistic development of the writer. In the introduction, Smith describes the literary use of names as creative choices that show the indebtedness of authors to previous literature, as well as their imaginative descriptions (etymologically and phonologically) of memorable character types, and their references to cultural phenomena that make their names meaningful to their contemporary readers and audience. This book presents fourteen essays demonstrating the analytical models explained in the introduction. These essays focus on Shakespeare’s comedies as presented in the First Folio. They do not follow the chronological order of their composition; instead, the individual essays give special attention to differences between the plays that suggest Shakespeare’s artistic development, including the varied sources of his borrowings, the differences between his etymological and phonological coinages, the frequency and types of his topical references, and his use of epithets and generics. This book will appeal to Shakespeare students and scholars at all levels, particularly those who are keen on studying his comedies. This study will also be relevant for researchers and graduate students interested in onomastics. He can be reached at gsmith@ewu.edu.
Remaking a Global Cantonese Community with Television and Social Media
Simin Li, University of Victoria
Availability: In stock
128pp. ¦ $50 £40 €47
Cantonese (Jyut Jyu) is a language prevailing in the Guangdong province of China, Hong Kong, Macau, and ethnic Chinese groups in Southeast Asia and North America. It evolves with the engagements of the authoritarian government and globalization over time. Cantonese in China is special because it remains strong under the constant suppression from the administration and the continual interactions between the natives and migrants. However, the concern about Cantonese dying among the natives has been increasing in recent years. The speaking population, the imposed language policy, and the economy at least determine Cantonese’s life. In particular, the economy is also a window to examine the central-local relations in China due to the leading roles of the Pearl River Delta, Hong Kong, and Macau in China’s economic growth. Therefore, the struggles of local language between the younger generation and the Communist Party via the Internet are exposed. The book intends to explore the rising of a potential language community around the globe that speaks Cantonese by analyzing the usage and images of Cantonese of a popular TV show on YouTube, discussion groups on Baidu Tieba and Facebook, and talk shows on Bilibili with content analysis, interviews, and cases studies. Through this research, the relations between language and collective identity will be presented in an innovative way. "Remaking a Global Cantonese Community with Television and Social Media" has something to offer everyone, regardless of age or background. For those residing in mainland China, it’s a journey back in time. Older Cantonese speakers will reminisce about their childhood, with memories of delicious Cantonese food, playful children’s songs, and cherished customs. Even those who aren’t native Cantonese speakers will recall the Cantonese TV shows, movies, and music that colored their youth. Younger readers will find familiar elements in the short videos they currently enjoy. For language preservation advocates, this book sheds light on Cantonese speakers’ efforts to protect their native language and the challenges they face. For readers outside of mainland China, it offers insights into the country’s internal changing landscape, especially grassroots practices and identities. By blending the disciplines of linguistics, political science, and communication, this book provides a broad perspective on how language is intertwined with our sense of belonging.
Western Japaneseness: Intercultural Translations of Japan in Western Media
Edited by
Frank Jacob, Nord University, Norway
and Bruno Surace, Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy
Availability: In stock
174pp. ¦ $44 £33 €38
Our images of non-Western cultures are often based on stereotypes that are replicated over the years. These stereotypes often appear in popular media and are responsible for a pre-set image of otherness. The present book investigates these processes and the media representation of otherness, especially as an artificial construct based on stereotypes and their repetition, in the case of Japan. 'Western Japaneseness' thereby illustrates how the Western image of Japan in popular media is rather a construct that, in a way, replicated itself, instead of a more serious encounter with a foreign and different cultural context. This book will be of great value to students and academics who hold interest in media studies, Japanese studies, and cultural studies. It will also appeal to a broader audience with interests in Japan more generally.
Black Panther: Wakandan “Civitas” and Panthering Futurity
Edited by
Jorge Serrano, University of Delaware
Availability: In stock
239pp. ¦ $87 £72 €82
This interdisciplinary academic study is for readers interested in film, media, and the comic book genre. Superhero theories are abundant, especially considering their use as a tool for coping with adversity, and some note that it is an integral part of American society, young formative minds, in particular. It is not just about learning morals but also seeing how an ideal society should function and look. There are works that review superheroes and theories about comic book series adaptions in film and text, but the writers in this compendium engage not only with the film and the intersectionality of women, Asian culture, Du Bois, and even Greek Ajax and others for comparison but also comparative analysis of works that capture African and African diasporic representation throughout various historical time periods. The anthology presents discourse that engages a variety of assessments that involve questions of positive and pejorative representation. Educators will find this a useful tool for undergraduate students as well as general audiences interested in this popular film/comic series.
Snapping and Wrapping: Personal Photography in Japan
Richard M. Chalfen, Temple University
Availability: In stock
232pp. ¦ $61 £46 €52
'Snapping and Wrapping' represents an original study in Japanese visual culture, pictorial communication, and photographic studies. Vernacular visual culture is highlighted, stressing ordinary people and everyday life to explore photographic expressions of Japanese family life. The theme of “how people looked” is described from two closely related perspectives: how people appeared in their own photographs, and how people looked at specific features of their own lives with analog camera technology. The book includes unexamined material based on a qualitative study involving personal fieldwork undertaken between 1993 and 2009. The metaphor of “wrapping culture” (Hendry) is suggested for ways of interpreting relationships of personal family photographs in conjunction with acknowledged cultural influences and values of Japanese culture. Across an introduction and six chapters, the book covers a series of research topics evoked by efforts to recover, repair, and return millions of photographs to survivors following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Memory, privacy and kinds of information control are reviewed as parts of strategies of sharing pictures, “presence” and the use of photographs for interpersonal interaction and communication. Throughout the monograph, emphasis is placed on understanding details of analog personal photography for potential comparisons to the intensely popular digitalization of photographic recordings and, in turn, facilitate making informed speculations for future photographic practice. This book will be of interest to upper-level students, graduate students and scholars in the fields of media and culture, Asian Studies (especially Japanese visual culture), as well as those working on sensitive relationships of family, memory and representation.
Polyptych: Adaptation, Television, and Comics
Edited by
Reginald Wiebe, Concordia University of Edmonton
Availability: In stock
219pp. ¦ $54 £40 €46
Through each of its chapters, 'Polyptych: Adaptation, Television, and Comics' examines the complex dynamics of adapting serialized texts. The transmedial adaptation of collaborative and unstable texts does not lend itself to the same strategies as other, more static adaptations such as novels or plays. Building off the foundational work of Linda Hutcheon and Gérard Genette, Polyptych considers the analogy of adaptation as a palimpsest—a manuscript page that has been reused, leaving traces of the previous work behind—as needing to be reevaluated. A polyptych is a multi-panel artwork and provides a new model for analyzing how adaptation works when translating collaborative and unstable texts. Given that most television and comic books are episodic and serialized, and considering that both media are also the cumulative work of many artists, this book offers a series of distanced readings to reassess how adaptation works in this field. Comic book adaptations on television are plentiful and are nearly completely ignored in critical discussions of adaptation. This collection focuses on texts that fall outside the most common subjects of study among the corpus and contributes to expanding the field of inquiry. The book features texts that are subjects of previous academic interest, as well as studies of texts that have never before been critically considered. It also includes an appendix that provides the first list of comic book adaptations on North American television. 'Polyptych' is a unique and timely contribution to dynamic and growing fields of study. The book will be of interest to scholars and researchers in the fields of Comic Studies, Adaptation Studies, and Critical Media Studies more broadly, as well as to students undertaking courses on these subjects. It will also appeal to comic book and pop culture fans who wish to expand their knowledge on the subject.
“A Hero Will Endure”: Essays at the Twentieth Anniversary of 'Gladiator'
Edited by
Rachel L. Carazo, St. Thomas University
Availability: In stock
396pp. ¦ $96 £79 €90
This volume adds to previous historical and political studies about 'Gladiator' with essays about the movie’s relation to pop culture and contemporary discourses. It not only relates 'Gladiator' to traditional cinema aspects such as heroism, music, acting, studio culture, and visual effects, but it also connects the film to sports, religion, and the environment, expanding the ways in which the film can be evaluated by modern audiences. The volume can be read by individuals or in classroom settings, especially as a recommended text for students studying the ancient world in film.
Young People and Social Media: Contemporary Children’s Digital Culture
Edited by
Steve Gennaro, York University, Toronto, Canada
and Blair Miller, York University, Toronto, Canada
Availability: In stock
455pp. ¦ $89 £67 €77
‘Young People and Social Media: Contemporary Children’s Digital Culture’ explores the practices, relationships, consequences, benefits, and outcomes of children’s experiences with, on, and through social media by bringing together a vast array of different ideas about childhood, youth, and young people’s lives. These ideas are drawn from scholars working in a variety of disciplines, and rather than just describing the social construction of childhood or an understanding of children’s lives, this collection seeks to encapsulate not only how young people exist on social media but also how their physical lives are impacted by their presence on social media. One of the aims of this volume in exploring youth interaction with social media is to unpack the structuring of digital technologies in terms of how young people access the technology to use it as a means of communication, a platform for identification, and a tool for participation in their larger social world. During longstanding and continued experience in the broad field of youth and digital culture, we have come to realize that not only is the subject matter increasing in importance at an immeasurable rate, but the amount of textbooks and/or edited collections has lagged behind considerably. There is a lack of sources that fully encapsulate the canon of texts for the discipline or the rich diversity and complexity of overlapping subject areas that create the fertile ground for studying young people’s lives and culture. The editors hope that this text will occupy some of that void and act as a catalyst for future interdisciplinary collections. ‘Young People and Social Media: Contemporary Children’s Digital Culture’ will appeal to undergraduate students studying Child and Youth Studies and—given the interdisciplinary nature of the collection— scholars, researchers and students at all levels working in anthropology, psychology, sociology, communication studies, cultural studies, media studies, education, and human rights, among others. Practitioners in these fields will also find this collection of particular interest.
The Atlantic as Mythical Space: An Essay on Medieval Ethea
Alfonso J. Garcia-Osuna, Hofstra University
Availability: In stock
298pp. ¦ $59 £44 €50
'The Atlantic as Mythical Space' is a study of medieval culture and its concomitant myths, legends and fantastic narratives as it developed along the European Atlantic seaboard. It is an inclusive study that touches upon early medieval Ireland, the pre-Hispanic Canary Islands, the Iberian Peninsula, courtly-love France and the pagan and early-Christian British Isles. The obvious and consequential ligature that runs throughout the different sections of this text is the Atlantic Ocean, a bewildering expanse of mythical substance that for centuries fueled the imagination of ocean-side peoples. It analyzes how and why myths with the Atlantic as preferential stage are especially relevant in pagan and early-Christian western Europe. It further examines how prescientific societies fashioned an alternate cosmos in the Atlantic where events, beings and places existed in harmony with communal mental structures. It explores why in that contrived geography these societies’ angels and monsters were able to materialize with wonderful profusion; it further analyzes how the ocean became a place where human beings ventured forth searching for explanations for what is essentially unknowable: the origins of the universe and the reason for our existence in it.
Gamification in the RhetComp Curriculum
Edited by
Chris McGunnigle, Seton Hall University
Availability: In stock
334pp. ¦ $93 £77 €88
Gamification is an up and coming popular trend in all levels and types of education, including public and private schools, higher education, the military, the private sector, and elsewhere. Gamification introduces aspects of game design like teamwork, competition, rewards and prizes, storytelling, and more into lesson plan units. In many cases, actual games, whether it be Scrabble, Hangman, Candy Crush, Dungeons & Dragons, and many others, are adapted into educational tools. This chapter collection will specifically look at the use of gamification techniques in Freshmen Writing courses and related Composition, Writing and Rhetoric classes. Each chapter will provide sample gamified lessons supported by relevant scholarship in both Gamification Theory and Writing Studies.
Political Messaging in Music and Entertainment Spaces across the Globe. Volume 1.
Edited by
Uche Onyebadi
Availability: In stock
339pp. ¦ $86 £67 €74
'Political Messaging in Music and Entertainment Spaces across the Globe' uniquely expands the frontiers of political communication by simultaneously focusing on content (political messaging) and platform (music and entertainment). As a compendium of valuable research work, it provides rich insights into the construction of political messages and their dissemination outside of the traditional and mainstream structural, process and behavioral research focus in the discipline. Researchers, teachers, students and other interested parties in political communication, political science, journalism and mass communication, sociology, music, languages, linguistics and the performing arts, communication studies, law and history, will find this book refreshingly handy in their inquiry. Furthermore, this book was conceptualized from a globalist purview and offers readers practical insights into how political messaging through music and entertainment spaces actually work across nation-states, regions and continents. Its authenticity is also further enhanced by the fact that most chapter contributors are scholars who are natives of their areas of study, and who painstakingly situate their work in appropriate historical contexts.
Political Messaging in Music and Entertainment Spaces across the Globe. Volume 2.
Edited by
Uche Onyebadi
Availability: In stock
313pp. ¦ $86 £67 €74
'Political Messaging in Music and Entertainment Spaces across the Globe' uniquely expands the frontiers of political communication by simultaneously focusing on content (political messaging) and platform (music and entertainment). As a compendium of valuable research work, it provides rich insights into the construction of political messages and their dissemination outside of the traditional and mainstream structural, process and behavioral research focus in the discipline. Researchers, teachers, students and other interested parties in political communication, political science, journalism and mass communication, sociology, music, languages, linguistics and the performing arts, communication studies, law and history, will find this book refreshingly handy in their inquiry. Furthermore, this book was conceptualized from a globalist purview and offers readers practical insights into how political messaging through music and entertainment spaces actually work across nation-states, regions and continents. Its authenticity is also further enhanced by the fact that most chapter contributors are scholars who are natives of their areas of study, and who painstakingly situate their work in appropriate historical contexts.
The changing face of VR: Pushing the boundaries of experience across multiple industries
Edited by
Michael Saker, City University London
and Jordan Frith, Clemson University
Availability: In stock
195pp. ¦ $85 £70 €80
VR occupies an interesting place in the media ecosystem. On the one hand, it is an emerging, ‘cutting-edge’ technology backed by billions of USD by major corporations. On the other hand, VR is older than the World Wide Web and older than social networking sites. After many years of hype and unfulfilled potential, VR is now finally on the precipice of widespread adoption and has begun to be used in novel ways throughout various industries. This edited collection brings together a diverse group of authors to analyse the current state of VR, while recognizing that these many different use-cases will likely become even more important with the increased investment in the technology. To examine the current state of VR across multiple sites and industries, we compiled a group of practitioners and academics to both examine VR practices and theorize new uses of VR. The book also focuses on an inclusive analysis and includes authors from South America, North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia, and the topics range from analyses of VR use in live events to the ethics of nature-based VR apps to the social practices involved in using public VR at museum exhibits. As we argue in the introduction, this book is one of the first to bring together authors from different backgrounds and disciplines to chart just how widely VR has already spread. And maybe most importantly, the topics covered in this book will only become more relevant as VR continues to grow, especially in the wake of the growth of the supposed Metaverse.
Media, Practice and Theory: Tracking emergent thresholds of experience
Edited by
Nicole De Brabandere, McGill University
Availability: In stock
252pp. ¦ $87 £72 €82
This volume gathers research at the intersection of art and the interdisciplinary humanities to develop an understanding of media assemblages that insist on the generativity of their situatedness within ecologies of practice. These contributions propose media assemblages that enlarge the time and space for co-compositions between media and bodies that reshape subjective, perceptual, and affective registers of experience. Media assemblages include photography, performance, criticism, curation, installation, animation, collage, video and VR, as well as archival and somatic practices. Research as a form of practice is a key orientation in this volume since it offers a means of engaging the world-making proposition offered by Isabelle Stengers that practices are specified through irreducible entanglements that cause one to think, feel, and hesitate. The generative linkages between different disciplinary approaches for engaging research practice across the arts and humanities are favoured over disciplinary and media-based exclusivity. When practice is not posed as an intervention or counterpoint to scholarly research or in opposition to the discursive, differences emerge, not based on convention but through the situatedness of emergent insight. The goal is thus not to forward a reproducible formula for knowledge creation but to weave the conditions for utterances both within and in excess of discipline, convention, and establishment. How can research engender the making of communities between, across, and in excess of institutional frameworks through the emergent affinities, postures, and formats of evolving and inclusive forms of research? This volume is a valuable reference for researchers/practitioners within the arts and humanities as it exemplifies both critical and situated methods for developing interdisciplinary research as a means of transforming the terms of research itself.
Star Trek: Essays Exploring the Final Frontier
Edited by
Emily Strand
and Amy H. Sturgis
Availability: In stock
229pp. ¦ $87 £72 €82
After more than 55 years of transmedia storytelling, 'Star Trek' is a global phenomenon that has never been more successful than it is today. 'Star Trek' fandom is worldwide, time tested, and growing, and academic interest in the franchise, both inside and outside of the classroom, is high; at the moment, more 'Star Trek' works are underway or in development simultaneously than at any other moment in history. Unlike works that focus on a limited number of stories/media in this franchise or only offer one expert’s or discipline’s insights, this accessible and multidisciplinary anthology includes analyses from a wide range of scholars and explores 'Star Trek' from its debut in 1966 to its current incarnations, considers its implications for and collaborations with fandom, and trace its ideas and meanings across series, media, and time. 'Star Trek: Essays Exploring the Final Frontier' will undoubtedly speak to academics in the field, students in the classroom, and informed lay readers and fans.
La sociedad desconfiada. Debates televisivos, jóvenes y política en Ecuador
Giovanni Brancato, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Availability: In stock
166pp. ¦ $42 £34 €39
Los jóvenes, la política y los medios de comunicación son los tres pilares que sostienen la investigación objeto de este volumen dedicado al estudio de los efectos producidos en las audiencias televisivas, en términos de confianza en la política y sus protagonistas, tras la exposición a contenidos mediáticos “conflictivos”. El libro intercepta un tema muy importante y de gran actualidad en tiempos en los que la sociedad se caracteriza por un sentimiento de cinismo, por una parte, y por la proliferación de fenómenos políticos populistas, por otra. Además, la elección de analizar el contexto político y mediático ecuatoriano cómo caso de estudio hace que este trabajo de investigación sea único entre las contribuciones académicas en el campo de los estudios e investigaciones al respecto en las ciencias de la comunicación y la sociología política. El volumen se divide en dos partes. La primera sección está dedicada a las relaciones entre los medios de comunicación, los ciudadanos y la política en la era de la desconfianza generalizada. En particular, se analizará la evolución de la comunicación política tras la aparición de la televisión y en los posibles efectos de los medios en los hábitos y prácticas informativas y política de los ciudadanos, centrándose en la sociedad ecuatoriana en los últimos veinte años. La segunda parte del libro presenta las fases de trabajo y los resultados de la investigación en campo llevada a cabo por el autor, caracterizada por un diseño cuasiexperimental, con el objetivo de analizar las dinámicas conflictivas típicas del debate en los talk shows y sus relaciones con los posibles efectos en las audiencias sobre el nivel de cinismo público.
Seeking to Understand the World: Literary Journalism of Vincent Sheean
Anish Dave, Stephen F. Austin State University
Availability: In stock
157pp. ¦ $52 £42 €43
Vincent Sheean, a groundbreaking American foreign correspondent and author, is known for reporting from Europe, North Africa, and Asia, writing news reports, articles, and books. A few books and articles have described Vincent Sheean’s life, and briefly discussed his major nonfiction books. However, no book-length study or article has closely examined his nonfiction books. 'Seeking to Understand the World: Literary Journalism of Vincent Sheean', textually analyzes his five nonfiction, journalistic books to examine them for characteristics of literary journalism. Spanning nearly the entirety of his journalistic career, these books include 'Personal History' (1935), 'Not Peace but a Sword' (1939), 'Between the Thunder and the Sun' (1943), 'Lead, Kindly Light' (1949), and 'Nehru: The Years of Power' (1960). Set in different world areas, the books illuminate events as disparate as the Riffian war, the Spanish Civil War, the infamous Munich pact, the Nazi bombing of London, and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Sheean’s books provide an in-depth, personal look at these and related events. This book includes analysis of Sheean’s works, finding that they have several prominent characteristics of literary journalism: stories and scenes, cohesive structure, lifelike characters, vivid description, well-crafted sentences, immersive reporting, among others.
Anime, Philosophy and Religion
Edited by
William H. U. Anderson, Concordia University of Edmonton in Alberta
and Kaz Hayashi, Bethel University
Availability: In stock
362pp. ¦ $96 £81 €89
Anime is exploding on the worldwide stage! Anime has been a staple in Japan for decades, strongly connected to manga. So why has anime become a worldwide sensation? A cursory explanation is the explosion of online streaming services specializing in anime, like Funimation and Crunchyroll. Even more general streaming services like Netflix and Amazon have gotten in on the game. Anime is exotic to Western eyes and culture. That is one of the reasons anime has gained worldwide popularity. This strange aesthetic draws the audience in only to find it is deeper and more sophisticated than its surface appearance. Japan is an honor and shame culture. Anime provides a platform to discuss “universal” problems facing human beings. It does so in an amazing variety of ways and subgenres, and often with a sense of humor. The themes, characters, stories, plotlines, and development are often complex. This makes anime a deep well of philosophical, metaphysical, and religious ideas for analysis. International scholars are represented in this book. There is a diversity of perspectives on a diversity of anime, themes, content, and analysis. It hopes to delve deeper into the complex world of anime and demonstrate why it deserves the respect of scholars and the public alike.
The History of Domestication of Speech
Kazım Tolga Gürel
Availability: In stock
142pp. ¦ $55 £44 €52
Throughout history, speech has been forbidden or at least restricted to the laboring classes. Enslaved people laboring in ancient Egypt or working on Latin American plantations were forbidden to speak during work. In the early period of nation-states, the language of many peoples was forbidden because of the sovereignty of the lingua franca. Censorship has taken various forms in the history of all states. Talk amongst the laboring classes could lead to revolt and revolution; for this reason, speech was restricted during the harshest periods of labor. However, speech could be commercialized and reproduced in a society where all individuals were atomized entirely and isolated, in an environment where meaning was almost lost. In short, speech was supervised and controlled for the oppressed until the second half of the 20th century. However, especially in the postmodern period, speech has been supported at every point and subjected to significant inflation as if it were detached from meaningfulness. The pressures previously placed on the speech of workers and marginalized groups have suddenly diminished; speech everywhere has been commercialized and reproduced. This book analyses the causes of this evolution.
Mediated Ideologies: Nordic Views on the History of the Press and Media Cultures
Edited by
Jukka Kortti, University of Helsinki, Finland
and Heidi Kurvinen, University of Turku, Finland
Availability: In stock
252pp. ¦ $101 £81 €94
Ideologies have not been a focus of interest in the field of humanities and social sciences in recent decades, but rethinking the power of ideologies in the media sphere has recently returned to the scholarly discussion. The compilation book “Mediated Ideologies: Nordic Views on the History of the Press and Media Cultures” participates in this by providing selected yet justified approaches to media history from the point of view of ideological uses of media in the Nordic region. In this book, the role of media – comprising both popular media and news journalism – as a forum for ideologies and their circulation will be analyzed by focusing on the Nordic region. The perceived similarities in the media systems of the Nordic countries constitute a perfect extent for a regional media history against not only a European but also a global backdrop. This does not mean that there have not been many national differences. The book does not provide a chronological narrative of Nordic media history. Still, the ideology of media is approached not only from the standpoints of different media forms – film, television, newspapers, magazines, and periodicals – but also from several historical periods from the mid-19th century to the late 20th century. The chapters show the multidimensional role that the media has in transmitting ideologies to their audiences and the public sphere. They also demonstrate that analyzing the role of different ideologies, such as modernization, nationalism, solidarity, feminism, and peace movement in media history provides wider perspectives in understanding past and present media landscapes and people’s mediated experiences that are fostered by them. “Mediated Ideologies: Nordic Views on the History of the Press and Media Cultures” can be used both as a reference book and as a classroom adaption in the field of media, communication, and history studies.
