Modern Gothic culture alternately fascinates, horrifies, or bewilders many of us. We cringe at pictures of Marilyn Manson, cheer for Buffy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and try not to stare at the pierced and tattooed teens we pass on the streets. But what is it about this dark and morbidly morose aesthetic that fascinates us today? In Contemporary Gothic, Catherine Spooner probes the reasons behind the prevalence of the Gothic in popular culture and how it has inspired innovative new work in film, literature, music, and art. Spooner traces the emergence of the Gothic subculture over the past few decades and examines the various aspects of contemporary society that revolve around the grotesque, abject, and artificial. The Gothic is continually resituated in different spheres of culture, she reveals, as she explores the transplantation of the “street” Goth style to haute couture runway looks by fashion designers. The Gothic also appears in a number of surprisingly diverse representations, and Spoonerconsiders them all, from the artistic excesses of Jake and Dinos Chapman to the fashions of Alexander McQueen, and from the mind-bending films of David Lynch to the abnormal postmodern subjects of Joel-Peter Witkin’s photography. In an engaging way, Contemporary Gothic argues that this style ultimately balances a number of contradictions—the grotesque and incorporeal, authentic self-expression and campiness, mass popularity and cult appeal, comfort and outrage—and these contradictions make the Gothic a crucial expression of contemporary cultural currents. Whether seeking to understand the stories behind the TV show Supernatural or to extract deeper meanings from modern literature, Contemporary Gothic is a lively and virtually unparalleled study of the modern Gothic sensibility that pervades popular culture today.
This innovative book is the first to make an explicit link between constructions of the body in Gothic literature and film and historically specific fashion discourse, from the 1790s to the 1990s.
Surveying the widespread appropriations of the Gothic in contemporary literature and culture, Post-Millennial Gothic shows contemporary Gothic is often romantic, funny and celebratory. Reading a wide range of popular texts, from Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series through Tim Burton's Gothic film adaptations of Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland and Dark Shadows, to the appearance of Gothic in fashion, advertising and television, Catherine Spooner argues that conventional academic and media accounts of Gothic culture have overlooked this celebratory strain of 'Happy Gothic'. Identifying a shift in subcultural sensibilities following media coverage of the Columbine shootings, Spooner suggests that changing perceptions of Goth subculture have shaped the development of 21st-century Gothic. Reading these contemporary trends back into their sources, Spooner also explores how they serve to highlight previously neglected strands of comedy and romance in earlier Gothic literature.
This second volume of The Cambridge History of the Gothic provides a rigorous account of the Gothic in British, American and Continental European culture, from the Romantic period through to the Victorian fin de siècle. Here, leading scholars in the fields of literature, theatre, architecture and the history of science and popular entertainment explore the Gothic in its numerous interdisciplinary forms and guises, as well as across a range of different international contexts. As much a cultural history of the Gothic in this period as an account of the ways in which the Gothic mode has participated in the formative historical events of modernity, the volume offers fresh perspectives on familiar themes while also drawing new critical attention to a range of hitherto overlooked concerns. From Romanticism, to Penny Bloods, Dickens and even the railway system, the volume provides a compelling and comprehensive study of nineteenth-century Gothic culture.
In the summer of 2010, Shirley Sherrod was catapulted into a media storm that blew apart her life and her job doing what she'd done for decades: helping poor, hardworking people live the American dream. She was a lifelong activist who served as Georgia's first black director of rural development. A right-wing blogger, the now late Andrew Breitbart, disseminated a video clip of a speech Sherrod had given to the Georgia NAACP, intending to make her an example of "reverse racism." The right-wing media ramped up the outrage, and before Sherrod had a chance to defend herself, the Obama administration demanded her resignation. Then, after hearing from Sherrod herself and learning the entire truth of what she said in that speech, the administration tried to backtrack. As public officials and media professionals admitted to being duped and apologized for their rush to judgment, Sherrod found herself the subject of a teachable moment. The Courage to Hope addresses this regret-table episode in American politics, but it also tells Sherrod's own story of growing up on a farm in southwest Georgia during the final violent years of Jim Crow. As a child she dreamed of leaving the South, but when her father was murdered by a white neighbor who was never brought to justice, Sherrod made a vow to stay in Georgia and commit herself to the cause of truth and racial healing. With her husband, Charles, a legend in the civil rights movement, she has devoted her life to empowering poor people and rural communities--Americans who are most in need. The incident that brought Sherrod into the spotlight does not define her life and work, but it strengthens her commitment to stand against the politics of fear and have the courage to hope.
This Reader's Guide synthesises the key criticism on Pinter's work over the last half century. Andrew Wyllie and Catherine Rees examine critical approaches and reactions to the major plays, charting the controversies which have arisen in response to Pinter's critiques of political and sexual issues. They consider criticism from the press and academics, on the themes of Absurdism, politics and gender identity. By placing this criticism in its historical context, this guide illustrates a transition from bewilderment and outrage to affection, fascination - and more outrage.
Provides information on macro-environmental influences on youth drug use, and how government policies and programs can positively or negatively influence those factors.
Family Fortunes has become a seminal text in class and gender history. Published to wide critical acclaim in 1987, its influence in the field continues to be extensive. It has cast new light on the perception of middle-class society and gender relations between 1780 and 1850. This revised edition contains a substantial new introduction, placing the original survey in its historiographical context. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall evaluate the readings their text has received and broaden their study by taking into account recent developments and shifts in the field. They apply current perceptions of history to their original project, and see new motives and meanings emerge that reinforce their argument.
The number 1 New York Times–bestselling author is back with an electrifying new entry in the FBI series featuring Savich and Sherlock. FBI Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith, last seen in Backfire, has been recruited by Dillon Savich to join his unit in Washington, D.C. Savich sees something special in Hammersmith, an almost preternatural instinct for tracking criminals. While on his way to D.C., Hammersmith plans to visit his sister, Delsey, a student at Stanislaus School of Music in Maestro, Virginia. Before he arrives, he gets a phone call that Delsey was found naked, unconscious, and covered with blood after a wild party. The blood isn't hers—so who does it belong to? Meanwhile, back in D.C., Savich and Sherlock have their hands full when the grandson of former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank is found murdered, every bone in his body broken, and frozen at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. Was Savich right—is Griffin gifted with a unique ability to "see" how criminals think? And will he figure out who was behind the attempt on Delsey's life—before it's too late?
This report presents the results of research into the governance, sustainability and funding of non-profit non-government organisations in the alcohol and other drugs sector in Australia, especially options for their future operation."--Provided by publisher.
The Oxford Compact Dictionary, Thesaurus, and Wordpower Guide gives you three books in one. The dictionary section offers excellent coverage of everyday English, with over 120,000 words, phrases, and definitions, while the thesaurus has over 150,000 alternative words. Other features include straightforward guidance on grammar and usage in the shape of in-text boxes and thousands of example sentences illustrating words in use. The Wordpower Guide offers extra help to improve your vocabulary, and includes a section on foreign words and phrases, information on collective names for animals and birds, useful vocabulary for use in word games, lists of common confusables, a section on selecting the right word, and an extensive Wordbuilder section which gives instant links to related words.
Groups of people abandoned sites in different ways, and for different reasons. And what they did when they left a settlement or area had a direct bearing on the kind and quality of cultural remains that entered the archaeological record, for example, whether buildings were dismantled or left standing, or tools buried, destroyed or removed from the site. Contributors to this unique collection on site abandonment draw on ethnoarchaeological and archaeological data from North and South America, Europe, Africa, and the Near East.
Though blacks were not often seen on the streets of seventeenth-century London, they were already capturing the British imagination. For two hundred years, as Britain shipped over three million Africans to the New World, popular images of blacks as slaves and servants proliferated in London art, both highbrow and low. Catherine Molineux assembles a surprising array of sources in her exploration of this emerging black presence, from shop signs, tea trays, trading cards, board games, playing cards, and song ballads to more familiar objects such as William Hogarth's graphic satires. By idealizing black servitude and obscuring the brutalities of slavery, these images of black people became symbols of empire to a general populace that had little contact with the realities of slave life in the distant Americas and Caribbean. The earliest images advertised the opulence of the British Empire by depicting black slaves and servants as minor, exotic characters who gazed adoringly at their masters. Later images showed Britons and Africans in friendly gatherings, smoking tobacco together, for example. By 1807, when Britain abolished the slave trade and thousands of people of African descent were living in London as free men and women, depictions of black laborers in local coffee houses, taverns, or kitchens took center stage. Molineux's well-crafted account provides rich evidence for the role that human traffic played in the popular consciousness and culture of Britain during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and deepens our understanding of how Britons imagined their burgeoning empire.
Children and horror are often thought to be an incompatible meeting of audience and genre, beset by concerns that children will be corrupted or harmed through exposure to horror media. Nowhere is this tension more clear than in horror films for adults, where the demonic child villain is one of the genre's most enduring tropes. However, horror for children is a unique category of contemporary Hollywood cinema in which children are addressed as an audience with specific needs, fears and desires, and where child characters are represented as sympathetic protagonists whose encounters with the horrific lead to cathartic, subversive and productive outcomes. Horror Films for Children examines the history, aesthetics and generic characteristics of children's horror films, and identifies the 'horrific child' as one of the defining features of the genre, where it is as much a staple as it is in adult horror but with vastly different representational, interpretative and affective possibilities. Through analysis of case studies including blockbuster hits (Gremlins), cult favourites (The Monster Squad) and indie darlings (Coraline), Catherine Lester asks, what happens to the horror genre, and the horrific children it represents, when children are the target audience?
A comprehensive biographical guide to the scientific achievements, personal lives, and struggles of women scientists from around the globe. International Women in Science: A Bibliographical Dictionary to 1950 presents the enormous contributions of women outside North America in fields ranging from aviation to computer science to zoology. It provides fascinating profiles of nearly 400 women scientists, both renowned figures like Florence Nightingale and Marie Curie and women we should know better, like Rosalind Franklin, who, along with James Watson and Francis Crick, uncovered the structure of DNA. Students and researchers will see how the lives of these remarkable women unfolded, and how they made their place in fields often stubbornly guarded by men, overcoming everything from limited education and professional opportunities, to indifference, ridicule, and cultural prejudice, to outright hostility and discrimination. Included are a number of living scientists, many of whom provide insights into their lives and scientific times. Those contributions, plus additional previously unavailable material, make this a volume of unprecedented scope and richness.
This guide offers a comprehensive account of British theatre from the 1960s to the present day. Placing critical commentary at the heart of its analysis, it explores how theatre critics and scholars have sought to understand and write about modern theatre, from the earliest reviews to revivals appearing decades later. With studies of contemporary reviews and archival material, Contemporary British Drama offers readers the opportunity to learn about British theatre in its original context and to chart shifting critical perceptions over the decades. It provides a crucial juxtaposition between the development of British theatre and its contemporaneous critical response, supplying an invaluable insight into the critical climate of recent decades. From feminist playwrighting to In-Yer-Face theatre, this is the ideal companion for undergraduate students of literature and theatre in need of an introduction to the debates surrounding contemporary British drama.
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