Cybernetics, the science of control systems, was first popularised as an idea in 1948, following Norbert Wiener’s seminal publication on the topic. Almost immediately, cybernetics gripped the imagination of science fiction writers and film and television producers. This collection explores decades of the intersection between cybernetics and speculative fiction, from the Cybermen of Doctor Who to the Borg of Star Trek, sci-fi luminaries from Isaac Asimov to George Lucas, a...

This edited collection encourages philosophical exploration of the nature, aims, contradictions, promises and problems of the practice of education within prisons around the world. Such exploration is particularly necessary given the complex operational barriers to education, and higher education in particular, within prison-based teaching and learning. These operational barriers are matched by cultural and polemical barriers, such as the criticism of diverting resources to and spending mo...

The image of the nurse is ubiquitous, both in life and in popular media. One of the earliest instances of nursing and media intersecting is the Edison phonographic recording of Florence Nightingale's voice in 1890. Since then, a parade of nurses, good, bad or otherwise, has appeared on both cinema and television screens. How do we interpret the many different types of nurses--real and fictional, lifelike and distorted, sexual and forbidding--who are so visible in the public consciousness?

This book considers how legal history has shaped and continues to shape our shared present. Each chapter draws a clear and significant connection to a meaningful feature of our lives today. Focusing primarily on England and Australia, contributions show the diversity of approaches to legal history’s relevance to the present. Some contributors have a tight focus on legal decisions of particular importance. Others take much bigger picture overview of major changes that take centuries to regi...

Globally, police officers are the object of unprecedented visual scrutiny. The use of mobile phones, CCTV and personal body cams means that police are not only being filmed on the job but are also filming themselves. In popular culture, police have featured heavily on the big screen since the era of silent shorts and on television since the 1930s. Their fictional portrayals today take on added significance in light of social unrest surrounding cases of police brutality and discrimination.

This edited volume focuses on the cultural production of knowledge in the academy as mediated or presented through film and television. This focus invites scrutiny of how the academy itself is viewed in popular culture from The Chair to Terry Pratchett's ‘Unseen University’ and Doctor Who's Time Lord Academy among others. Spanning a number of genres and key film and television series, the volume is also inherently interdisciplinary with perspectives from History, Cultural...

Science has always been part of Doctor Who. The first episode featured scenes in a science laboratory and a science teacher, and the 2020 season's finale highlighted a scientist's key role in Time Lord history. Hundreds of scientific characters, settings, inventions, and ethical dilemmas populated the years in between. Behind the scenes, Doctor Who's original remit was to teach children about science, and in the 1960s it even had a scientific advisor.This is the f...

Although it started as a British television show with a small but devoted fan base, Doctor Who has grown in popularity and now appeals to audiences around the world. In the fifty-year history of the program, Doctor Who’s producers and scriptwriters have drawn on a dizzying array of literary sources and inspirations. Elements from Homer, classic literature, gothic horror, swashbucklers, Jacobean revenge tragedies, Orwellian dystopias, Westerns, and the novels of Agatha Christie and Evelyn W...

Armed with pistols and wearing jackboots, Bishop Henry Compton rode out in 1688 against his King but in defence of the Church of England and its bishops. His actions are a dramatic but telling indication of what was at stake for bishops in early modern England and Compton's action at the height of the Restoration was the culmination of more than a century and a half of religious controversy that engulfed bishops. Bishops were among the most important instruments of royal, religious, nation...

Children's literature takes many forms - works adapted for children in antiquity, picture books and pop-ups - and now includes the latest online games and eBooks. This vast and amorphous subject is both intimately related to other areas of literary and cultural investigation but also has its own set of concerns, issues and challenges. From familiar authors including Beatrix Potter and Roald Dahl, classic books such as Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, and The Secret Garden

The first serious book-length study of crime writing in Canada, Detecting Canada Canada’s most popular crime writers, including Peter Robinson, Giles Blunt, Gail Bowen, Thomas King, Michael Slade, Margaret Atwood, and Anthony Bidulka.Genres examined range from the well-loved police procedural and the amateur sleuth to those less well known, such as anti-detection and contemporary noir novels. The book looks critically at the esteemed sixties’ television sh...

Teaching Adaptations addresses the challenges and appeal of teaching popular fiction and culture, video games and new media content, which serve to enrich the curriculum, as well as exploit the changing methods by which English students read and consume literary and screen texts.