Popular Culture and Literature I. Introduction A review of current human behavior and popular media highlights a contradiction in modern cultural perceptions of marine mammals. On the one hand, it [...]
Journal of Media Literacy Education, v6 n3 p81-89 2015. 9 pp.
Subjects
Popular Culture, Media Literacy, High School Seniors, English Instruction, Learning Modules, Athletics, Communication Skills, Reading Skills, Literature, Theory Practice Relationship, Electronic Publishing, Race, Sex, Gender Issues, Teaching Methods, Educational Practices, and Multimedia Instruction
Abstract
This article considers how media sports culture is an apt space for digital media literacy instruction. Describing a senior year high school English course that requires students to deconstruct and compose with sports media texts, the author outlines how learning modules, analysis of curated collections of texts through heuristics, and mentor texts help students achieve higher literacy levels. The author argues that sports media literacy, due to its authenticity and relevance, can be a model for traditional literacy classrooms as ways to infuse multimodal texts and help students to gain both enhanced communication skills and critical distance from media rhetoric.
The article introduces the theme of the journal, namely literature and/or popular culture in Taiwan, including depiction of the deity Nezha in popular Taiwanese culture, literary criticism of Taiwanese authors, especially gay authors, and historical literature in Taiwanese popular culture.
Jorge Catala Carrasco, Paulo Drinot, James Scorer, Jorge Catala Carrasco, Paulo Drinot, and James Scorer
Subjects
Popular culture and literature--Latin America, Graphic novels--Latin America--History and criticism, Comic books, strips, etc--Latin America--History and criticism, Collective memory in literature, and National characteristics, Latin American, in liter
Abstract
Latin American comics and graphic novels have a unique history of addressing controversial political, cultural, and social issues. This volume presents new perspectives on how comics on and from Latin America both view and express memory formation on major historical events and processes. The contributors, from a variety of disciplines including literary theory, cultural studies, and history, explore topics including national identity construction, narratives of resistance to colonialism and imperialism, the construction of revolutionary traditions, and the legacies of authoritarianism and political violence. The chapters offer a background history of comics and graphic novels in the region, and survey a range of countries and artists such as Joaquín Salvador Lavado (a.k.a Quino), Héctor G. Oesterheld, and Juan Acevedo. They also highlight the unique ability of this art and literary form to succinctly render memory. In sum, this volume offers in-depth analysis of an understudied, yet key literary genre in Latin American memory studies and documents the essential role of comics during the transition from dictatorship to democracy.
In this thesis I analyse a selection of Italian pulp fiction from the 1990s. My approach combines sociolinguistics and literary criticism, and uses textual analysis to show how this writing fuses influences from contemporary youth cultures and languages, and Italian literary tradition. The key themes of my analysis are pulp's multifaceted relationships with Anglophone culture, in particular punk music, its links to previous generations of Italian authors and intellectuals, and its engagement with contemporary Italian social issues. In Chapter 1, I review the existing literature on 1990s Italian pulp. Following on from this, I outline how a primarily linguistic approach allows me to consider a selection of authors, such as Rossana Campo, Silvia Ballestra, Aldo Nove, Enrico Brizzi and Isabella Santacroce, from a unifying perspective, and how this approach offers a means of considering the varied but contemporary perspectives on Italian culture, society, politics and literature offered by this group of writers. In Chapter 2, I show how pulp authors construct their linguistic style on the basis of spoken youth language varieties, and consider their motivations for doing so. Chapter 3 traces the literary precedents for this use of language, using comparative textual analysis to examine the nature of the relationships between pulp and American literature, and late twentieth century Italian fiction by Arbasino, Tondelli and Pasolini, in order to question some of the myths surrounding the literary sources of pulp. Chapter 4 deals with the relationship between pulp and popular culture, contrasting the notion of popular culture presented in this fiction to that proposed by earlier generations of Italian intellectuals, and discussing the theoretical perspectives that this reveals. Finally, I debate the extent to which pulps often disturbing and controversial subject matter reflects an attempt to deal with ethical issues, and consider pulp's success in achieving these aims.
Popular culture and literature--Criticism and interpretation and Gothic fiction (Literary genre)--History and criticism
Abstract
This volume provides a critical reappraisal of Stoker's Dracula by examining various adaptations of the book, as well as different literary, cinematic, theatrical, cultural, artistic and creative reworkings of the Gothic.
Allusions in literature, European literature--History and criticism, Popular culture in literature, and Mythology in literature
Abstract
Babylon under Western Eyes examines the mythic legacy of ancient Babylon, the Near Eastern city which has served western culture as a metaphor for power, luxury, and exotic magnificence for more than two thousand years.Sifting through the many references to Babylon in biblical, classical, medieval, and modern texts, Andrew Scheil uses Babylon's remarkable literary ubiquity as the foundation for a thorough analysis of the dynamics of adaptation and allusion in western literature. Touching on everything from Old English poetry to the contemporary apocalyptic fiction of the “Left Behind” series, Scheil outlines how medieval Christian society and its cultural successors have adopted Babylon as a political metaphor, a degenerate archetype, and a place associated with the sublime. Combining remarkable erudition with a clear and accessible style, Babylon under Western Eyes is the first comprehensive examination of Babylon's significance within the pantheon of western literature and a testimonial to the continuing influence of biblical, classical, and medieval paradigms in modern culture.
Girls in popular culture--Congresses, Girls in literature--Congresses, Girls--Congresses, Popular culture in literature--Congresses, and Politics in literature--Congresses
Abstract
This book focuses on girls and girlhoods, texts for and about girls, and the cultural contexts that shape girls'experience. It brings together scholars from girls'studies and children's literature, fields that have traditionally conducted their research separately, and the collaboration showcases the breadth and complexity of girl-related studies. Contributors from disciplines such as sociology, literature, education, and gender studies combine these disciplinary approaches in novel ways with insights from international studies, postcolonial studies, game studies, and other fields. Several of the authors engage in activist and policy-development work around girls who experience poverty and marginalization. Each essay is concerned in one way or another with the politics of girlhood as they manifest in national and cultural contexts, in the everyday practices of girls, and in textual ideologies and agendas. In contemporary Western societies girls and girlhood function to some degree as markers of cultural reproduction and change. The essays in this book proceed from the assumption that girls are active participants in the production of texts and cultural forms; they offer accounts of the diversity of girls'experience and complex significances of texts by, for, and about girls.
Popular culture in literature and Spanish literature--Classical period, 1500-1700--History and criticism
Abstract
Histeresis creativa traces how courtly spectacles, short and full-length plays, and picaresque narratives arose under Philip III of Spain, and were then adopted by popular culture. The book focuses on some of the most prominent writers of the early, middle, and late Baroque (Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega and Alonso de Castillo Solorzano) but considers their works through the optic of creative hysteresis, i.e., the artistic appropriation of the past to defend the present. The prestige system under Philip III was in need of justifying the imbalance between the increasing material and symbolic power of their patrons, their courtly prestige, and the consent of their subjects. These writers'commitment to the principles of distributive justice and their application to the acts of court oligarchs is reflected in the fundamentals of many of the spectacles and literary works produced during this period.
Popular culture and literature--Rome and Latin literature--History and criticism
Abstract
Who were Roman authors writing for? Only a minority of the population was fully literate and books were very expensive, individually hand-written on imported papyrus. So does it follow that great poets and prose authors like Virgil and Livy, Ovid and Petronius, were writing only for the cultured and the privileged? It is this modern consensus that is challenged in this volume. In an ambitious overview of a thousand years of history, from the formation of the city-state of Rome to the establishment of a fully Christian culture, T. P. Wiseman examines the evidence for the oral delivery of'literature'to mass public audiences. The treatment is chronological, utilizing wherever possible contemporary sources and the close reading of texts. Wiseman sees the history of Roman literature as an integral part of the social and political history of the Roman people, and draws some very unexpected inferences from the evidence that survives. In particular, he emphasizes the significance of the annual series of'stage games'(ludi scaenici), and reveals the hitherto unexplored common ground of literature, drama, and dance. Direct, accessible, and clearly written, The Roman Audience provides a fundamental reinterpretation of Roman literature as part of the historical experience of the Roman people, making it essential reading for all Latinists and Roman historians.
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