Download or read book Recovering the Radical Promise of Superheroes written by Ellen Kirkpatrick and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2023-08-23 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Superhero meaning making is a site of struggle. Superheroes (are thought to) trouble borders and normative ways of seeing and being in the world. Superhero narratives (are thought to) represent, and thereby inspire, alternative visions of the real world. The superhero genre is (thought to be) a repository for radical or progressive ideas. In the superhero world and beyond, much is made of the genre's utopian and dystopian landscapes, queer identity-play, and transforming bodies, but might it not be the case that the genre's overblown normative framing, or representation, serves to muzzle, rather than express, its protagonists' radical promise? Why, when set against otherwise unbounded, and often extreme, transformation-human to machine, human to animal, human to god-are certain categories seemingly untouchable? Why does this speculative genre routinely fail to fully speculate about other worlds and ways of being in those worlds? For all their nonconformity, superhero stories do not live up to the idea of a radical genre, in look, feel, or tone. The mainstream American superhero genre, and its surrounding discourses, tells and facilitates an astonishingly seamless tale of opposing ideologies. But how? Recovering the Radical Promise of Superheroes: Un/Making Worlds serves a speculative response, detailing not so much a hunt for genre meaning as a trip through a genre's meaningscape. Looking anew at superhero meaning-making practices allows a distinct way of thinking about and describing the creative, formal, and ideological conditions of the genre and its protagonists, one removed from corralling binaries, one foregrounding the idea of a synergy-often unseen, uneasy, and even hostile-between official and unofficial agents of superhero meaning and one reframing familiar questions: What kinds of meaning do superhero texts engender? How is this meaning made? By whom and under what conditions? What processes and practices inform, regulate, and extend superhero meaning? And finally, superhero narratives present a new question: How might we reimagine its agents, surfaces, and spaces? Centering the experiences and practices of excluded and marginalized superhero fans, Recovering the Radical Promise of Superheroes reveals that genre meaning is not lodged in one place or another, neither in its official creators or fans, nor in "black and white" conservatism or in a "rainbow" of progressive possibilities. Nor is it even located somewhere in the in-between; it is instead better conceived of as an antagonistic, in-process nexus of meaning undergirded by systems of power. Ellen Kirkpatrick, based in northern Ireland, is an activist-writer with a PhD in Cultural Studies. In her work, she writes about activism, pop culture, fan cultures, and the transformative power of storytelling. She has published work in a range of academic journals and media outlets and her writings and work can be found at The Break and on Twitter @elk_dash.

Download or read book Recovering the Radical Promise of the Superhero Genre written by Ellen Kirkpatrick and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Ages of Heroes Eras of Men written by Julian C. Chambliss and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-10 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ages of Heroes, Eras of Men explores the changing depiction of superheroes from the comic books of the 1930s to the cinematic present. In this anthology, scholars from a variety of disciplines including history, cultural studies, Latin American studies, film studies, and English examine the superheros cultural history in North America with attention to particular stories and to the historical contexts in which those narratives appeared. Enduring comic book characters from DC and Marvel Comics including Superman, Iron Man, Batman, Wonder Woman and the Avengers are examined, along with lesser-known Canadian, Latino, and African-American superheroes. With a sweep of characters ranging from the Pulp Era to recent cinematic adaptations, and employing a variety of analytical frameworks, this collection offers new insights for scholars, students, and fans of the superhero genre.

Download or read book Superheroes and Excess written by Jamie Brassett and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finding the superhero genre in need of further investigation from philosophical standpoints that value excess as a creative drive, rather than denigrate it as a problem to be resolved, this book opens up discussions that highlight different approaches to 'the creative excess of being' as expressed through the genre. While superheroes are an everyday, culturally dominant phenomena, philosophical methods and investigations have a reputation for lofty superiority. Across 13 chapters, this book facilitates a collision between the superhero genre and the discipline of philosophy, resulting in a voyage of exploration where each illuminates the other. The contributions in this book range from new voices to recognized scholars, offering superhero studies a set of critical interventions that are unusual, conceptually diverse, theoretically grounded and varied in practice. These chapters consider 'excessive' traits of superheroes against schools of thought that have attempted to conceptualize and understand excess by analysing texts and figures across a variety of mediums, such as The Fantastic Four, Captain America, The Vision, Logan, Black Panther and Super Hero Girls. With its unique approach to the superhero genre, this book will be an invaluable read for students and scholars working on comic studies, transmedia studies, cultural studies, popular culture and superhero studies.

Download or read book Superheroes and Masculinity written by Sean Parson and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2019-10-24 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Superheroes and Masculinity examines how heteropatriarchal representations of gender are both perpetuated and challenged within the superhero genre. This collection critiques stereotypical portrayals of hegemonic masculinity and explores queer alternatives to such formulations within superhero comics, film, and television.

Download or read book Comic Book Nation written by Bradford W. Wright and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2003-10-17 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of comic books from the 1930s to 9/11.

Download or read book Seeing Fans written by Lucy Bennett and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-07-14 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Split into four sections, Seeing Fans analyzes the representations of fans in the mass media through a diverse range of perspectives. This collection opens with a preface by noted actor and fan Orlando Jones (Sleepy Hollow), whose recent work on fandom (appearing with Henry Jenkins at Comic Con and speaking at the Fan Studies Network symposium) bridges the worlds of academia and the media industry. Section one focuses on the representations of fans in documentaries and news reports and includes an interview with Roger Nygard, director of Trekkies and Trekkies 2. The second section then examines fictional representations of fans through analyses of television and film, featuring interviews with Emily Perkins of Supernatural, Robert Burnett, director of the film Free Enterprise, and Luminosity, a fan who has been interviewed in the New York Magazine for her exemplary work in fandom. Section three explores cultural perspectives on fan representations, and includes an interview with Laurent Malaquais, director of Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony. Lastly, the final section looks at global perspectives on the ways fans have been represented and finishes with an interview with Jeanie Finlay, director of the music documentary Sound it Out. The collection then closes with an afterword by fan studies scholar Professor Matt Hills.

Download or read book DIY MFA written by Gabriela Pereira and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-07-08 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Get the Knowledge Without the College! You are a writer. You dream of sharing your words with the world, and you're willing to put in the hard work to achieve success. You may have even considered earning your MFA, but for whatever reason--tuition costs, the time commitment, or other responsibilities--you've never been able to do it. Or maybe you've been looking for a self-guided approach so you don't have to go back to school. This book is for you. DIY MFA is the do-it-yourself alternative to a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. By combining the three main components of a traditional MFA--writing, reading, and community--it teaches you how to craft compelling stories, engage your readers, and publish your work. Inside you'll learn how to: • Set customized goals for writing and learning. • Generate ideas on demand. • Outline your book from beginning to end. • Breathe life into your characters. • Master point of view, voice, dialogue, and more. • Read with a "writer's eye" to emulate the techniques of others. • Network like a pro, get the most out of writing workshops, and submit your work successfully. Writing belongs to everyone--not only those who earn a degree. With DIY MFA, you can take charge of your writing, produce high-quality work, get published, and build a writing career.

Download or read book Keywords for Comics Studies written by Ramzi Fawaz and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduces key terms, research traditions, debates, and histories, and offers a sense of the new frontiers emerging in the field of comics studies Across more than fifty original essays, Keywords for Comics Studies provides a rich, interdisciplinary vocabulary for comics and sequential art. The essays also identify new avenues of research into one of the most popular and diverse visual media of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Keywords for Comics Studies presents an array of inventive analyses of terms central to the study of comics and sequential art that are traditionally siloed in distinct lexicons: these include creative and aesthetic terms like Ink, Creator, Border, and Panel; conceptual terms such as Trans*, Disability, Universe, and Fantasy; genre terms like Zine, Pornography, Superhero, and Manga; and canonical terms like X-Men, Archie, Watchmen, and Love and Rockets. This volume ties each specific comic studies keyword to the larger context of the term within the humanities. Essays demonstrate how scholars, cultural critics, and comics artists from a range of fields take up sequential art as both an object of analysis and a medium for developing new theories about embodiment, identity, literacy, audience reception, genre, cultural politics, and more. Keywords for Comics Studies revivifies the fantasy and magic of reading comics in its kaleidoscopic view of the field’s most compelling and imaginative ideas.

Download or read book Death Disability and the Superhero written by José Alaniz and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Thing. Daredevil. Captain Marvel. The Human Fly. Drawing on DC and Marvel comics from the 1950s to the 1990s and marshaling insights from three burgeoning fields of inquiry in the humanities--disability studies, death and dying studies, and comics studies--José Alaniz seeks to redefine the contemporary understanding of the superhero. Beginning in the Silver Age, the genre increasingly challenged and complicated its hypermasculine, quasi-eugenicist biases through such disabled figures as Ben Grimm/The Thing, Matt Murdock/Daredevil, and the Doom Patrol. Alaniz traces how the superhero became increasingly vulnerable, ill, and mortal in this era. He then proceeds to a reinterpretation of characters and series--some familiar (Superman), some obscure (She-Thing). These genre changes reflected a wider awareness of related body issues in the postwar United States as represented by hospice, death with dignity, and disability rights movements. The persistent highlighting of the body's "imperfection" comes to forge a predominant aspect of the superheroic self. Such moves, originally part of the Silver Age strategy to stimulate sympathy, enhance psychological depth, and raise the dramatic stakes, developed further in such later series as The Human Fly, Strikeforce: Morituri, and the landmark graphic novel The Death of Captain Marvel, all examined in this volume. Death and disability, presumed routinely absent or denied in the superhero genre, emerge to form a core theme and defining function of the Silver Age and beyond.

Download or read book The Superhero Reader written by Charles Hatfield and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2013-06-14 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With contributions from Will Brooker, Jeffrey A. Brown, Scott Bukatman, John G. Cawelti, Peter Coogan, Jules Feiffer, Charles Hatfield, Henry Jenkins, Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence, Gerard Jones, Geoff Klock, Karin Kukkonen, Andy Medhurst, Adilifu Nama, Walter Ong, Lorrie Palmer, Richard Reynolds, Trina Robbins, Lillian Robinson, Roger B. Rollin, Gloria Steinem, Jennifer Stuller, Fredric Wertham, and Philip Wylie Despite their commercial appeal and cross-media reach, superheroes are only recently starting to attract sustained scholarly attention. This groundbreaking collection brings together essays and book excerpts by major writers on comics and popular culture. While superhero comics are a distinct and sometimes disdained branch of comics creation, they are integral to the development of the North American comic book and the history of the medium. For the past half-century, they have also been the one overwhelmingly dominant market genre. The sheer volume of superhero comics that have been published over the years is staggering. Major superhero universes constitute one of the most expansive storytelling canvases ever fashioned. Moreover, characters inhabiting these fictional universes are immensely influential, having achieved iconic recognition around the globe. Their images and adventures have shaped many other media, such as film, videogames, and even prose fiction. The primary aim of this reader is twofold: first, to collect in a single volume a sampling of the most sophisticated commentary on superheroes, and second, to bring into sharper focus the ways in which superheroes connect with larger social, cultural, literary, aesthetic, and historical themes that are of interest to a great many readers both in the academy and beyond.

Download or read book Hot Pants and Spandex Suits written by Esther De Dauw and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-15 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The superheroes from DC and Marvel comics are some of the most iconic characters in popular culture today. But how do these figures idealize certain gender roles, body types, sexualities, and racial identities at the expense of others? Hot Pants and Spandex Suits offers a far-reaching look at how masculinity and femininity have been represented in American superhero comics, from the Golden and Silver Ages to the Modern Age. Scholar Esther De Dauw contrasts the bulletproof and musclebound phallic bodies of classic male heroes like Superman, Captain America, and Iron Man with the figures of female counterparts like Wonder Woman and Supergirl, who are drawn as superhumanly flexible and plastic. It also examines the genre’s ambivalent treatment of LGBTQ representation, from the presentation of gay male heroes Wiccan and Hulkling as a model minority couple to the troubling association of Batwoman’s lesbianism with monstrosity. Finally, it explores the intersection between gender and race through case studies of heroes like Luke Cage, Storm, and Ms. Marvel. Hot Pants and Spandex Suits is a fascinating and thought-provoking consideration of what superhero comics teach us about identity, embodiment, and sexuality.

Download or read book Drawing Power written by Diane Noomin and published by ABRAMS. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by the global #MeToo Movement, Drawing Power: Women’s Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Survival is a collection of original, nonfiction comics drawn by more than 60 female cartoonists from around the world. Featuring such noted creators as Emil Ferris, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, MariNaomi, Liana Finck, and Ebony Flowers the anthology’s contributors comprise a diverse group of many ages, sexual orientations, and races—and their personal stories convey the wide spectrum of sexual harassment and abuse that is still all too commonplace. With a percentage of profits going to RAINN, Drawing Power is an anthology that stokes the fires of progressive social upheaval, in the fight for a better, safer world. Full list of contributors: Rachel Ang, Zoe Belsinger, Jennifer Camper, Caitlin Cass, Tyler Cohen, Marguerite Dabaie, Soumya Dhulekar, Wallis Eates, Trinidad Escobar, Kat Fajardo, Joyce Farmer, Emil Ferris, Liana Finck, Sarah Firth, Mary Fleener, Ebony Flowers, Claire Folkman, Noel Franklin Katie Fricas, Siobhán Gallagher, Joamette Gil, J. Gonzalez-Blitz, Georgiana Goodwin, Roberta Gregory, Marian Henley, Soizick Jaffre Avy Jetter, Sabba Khan, Kendra Josie Kirkpatrick, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Nina Laden, Miss Lasko-Gross, Carol Lay, Miriam Libicki Sarah Lightman, LubaDalu, Ajuan Mance, MariNaomi, Lee Marrs, Liz Mayorga, Lena Merhej, Bridget Meyne, Carta Monir, Hila Noam Diane Noomin, Breena Nuñez, Meg O’Shea, Corinne Pearlman, Cathrin Peterslund, Minnie Phan, Kelly Phillips, Powerpaola, Sarah Allen Reed, Kaylee Rowena, Ariel Schrag, M. Louise Stanley, Maria Stoian, Nicola Streeten, Marcela Trujillo, Carol Tyler, Una, Lenora Yerkes, Ilana Zeffren

Download or read book Revolutionary Nonviolence written by Professor Richard Jackson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-03-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revolutionary Nonviolence: Concepts, Cases and Controversies provides an advanced introduction to the central philosophy, ideas, themes, controversies and challenges of applying revolutionary nonviolence in political struggles today, with a particular emphasis on reframing nonviolence through a postcolonial lens. Bringing together an eminent group of researchers and activist-scholars, this collection focuses on a number of important questions: Is a commitment to radical nonviolence a necessity for generating revolutionary change in society? Should revolutionary movements abandon their reliance on political violence as a tool of change? What are some of the practical and theoretical challenges of adopting revolutionary nonviolence today? What can we learn from groups, actors and cases of people who have used revolutionary nonviolence to struggle against injustice? With a mix of theoretical and case study based chapters, the volume explores these and other important questions about how to generate necessary and lasting revolutionary change today.

Download or read book Enter the Aardvark written by Jessica Anthony and published by Random House. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'It's a long time since I have enjoyed a novel so much. Fresh, witty and smart it also has a heart.' KATE ATKINSON 'Sizzles with uproarious fun, from its snout to the sting in its tale.' INDEPENDENT 'The perfect tonic for testing times.' GUARDIAN We all know politics is absurd. But could a Republican be brought down by a stuffed aardvark? Republican congressman Alexander Paine Wilson is determined that nothing will stop him in his campaign for re-election. Not the fact that he is a bachelor, not the fact that his main adversary Nancy Beavers - married, with children - is rising in the polls. Nothing. That is, until one hot day in August, he receives a large parcel via FedEx. Inside is a gigantic taxidermied aardvark. This aardvark has a surprising history - from the Victorian naturalist who discovered it to the taxidermist who deemed it his finest creation. But for Wilson, the entrance of the aardvark sets off a chain of events that threaten to ruin his entire career. Constantly surprising, brilliantly comic and piquantly provocative, Enter the Aardvark is a tale for our times, a biting satire with a tender underbelly. ____________________________________________ 'Sometimes, a paragraph near the start of a novel is so perfect and funny that you read it over and over, laugh every time, and know you're in for a treat...I'm loving this. Completely insane but utterly hilarious'. JOHN BOYNE 'Spry, slim, clever...the inventiveness is impressive and the story has heart' THE SUNDAY TIMES 'What begins as a topical takedown of the American political system deepens into a hugely enjoyable romp through history.' OBSERVER 'Fresh, astute and mouthwateringly sharp, this is a rare thing; a political satire that tugs on the heartstrings in unconventional ways.' IRISH TIMES 'Sharp, inventive and very funny, it's an entertainingly bizarre political satire.' TATLER 'Part 21st-century political satire, part unexpectedly affecting 19th-century love story...It's every bit as strange as it sounds, and yet somehow it works' DAILY MAIL 'Old, dead creature brings down flash, vain senator... Out in front as the most fizzing and amusing novel of the year.' STRONG WORDS magazine 'A blisteringly innovative and outrageous novel.' NY OBSERVER 'Weird, wonderful, and very much of the moment, Enter the Aardvark is a landmark political novel of the Trump era...With heart and humor, Anthony expertly skewers our current political climate.' ESQUIRE 'Inventive and darkly funny...as Anthony connects characters from today with those from 19th-century England, she offers an original and unsettling lens through which to view male power as it has evolved over time.' TIME 'Enter Jessica Anthony. With her highly inventive, ever attentive, and morally serious (as all great comedy must be) Enter the Aardvark, she estranges all over again our deplorable political moment, and thereby helps make it bearable.' JOSHUA FERRIS 'Mischievously zoological and darkly satirical - a brilliant novel' JOHN IRONMONGER, author of NOT FORGETTING THE WHALE 'A feverish, rollicking beast of a book. Totally assured, completely unpredictable, Jessica Anthony has created a true original.' SIMON WROE, author of CHOP CHOP and HERE COMES TROUBLE

Download or read book Future Foundation written by Jeremy Whitley and published by Marvel Entertainment. This book was released on 2020-02-26 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collects Future Foundation (2019) #1-5, material from Fantastic Four (2018) #12. From the pages of FANTASTIC FOUR, it’s the next generation of Imaginauts! When the Richards family was called back to Earth to be the FF again, they left behind the Future Foundation — a think tank of the most brilliant young minds in the universe — with one mission: to find the pieces of their friend the Molecule Man and rebuild him. But that’s proving harder than imagined as this crew of young geniuses, Atlanteans, mutants, Moloids and androids have run into every problem in the Multiverse. Now, with the leadership of Alex and Julie Power, and a little extra firepower from Guest Professor Yondu Udonta, the team will undergo their most dangerous mission yet: a prison break! Brace yourself for a heart-pounding journey across time and space!

Download or read book Superhero written by Peter Coogan and published by . This book was released on 2024-02-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Coogan's 'Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre' unravels the evolution of superheroes. Discover the history, powers, and hero-villain dynamics in this concise, engaging read for comic fans and scholars.