A powerful cultural critique of soccer’s public rhetoricAmerican sports agnostics might raise an eyebrow at the idea that soccer represents a staging ground for cultural, social, and political possibility. It is just another game, after all, in a society where mass-audience spectator sports largely avoid any political stance other than a generic, corporate-friendly patriotism. But John M. Sloop picks up on the work of Laurent Dubois and others to see in Am...

The incarcerated in America's cultural imagination.The Cultural Prison brings a new dimension to the study of prisoners and punishment by focusing on how the punishment of American offenders is represented and shaped in the mass media through public arguments. The study is based on an analysis of 642 articles collected by the author from American popular journals and magazines, as well as newspaper accounts, films, and public speeches, spanning the years 1...

The concept of judgment has occupied a place of special importance in the tradition of Western thought. In antiquity and especially in the Enlightenment, judgment served as the rubric under which Western thinkers struggled to come to terms with how the world of human concerns is constituted in thought and, perhaps more important, how humans call for timely and appropriate actions. Recently, judgment has again emerged as a highly contestatory site for philosophical, rhetorical, and cultural...

A bold rethinking of public discourse, Public Modalities explores how people shape civic life through protest, media, and identity in an ever-evolving public sphere.This book explores the ways that scholars, journalists, politicians, and citizens conceive of “the public” or “public life,” and how those entities are defined and invented. For decades, scholars have used the metaphors of spheres, systems, webs, or networks to talk about, describe, and map var...

The first two years of DailyLimerick.net from Sloop Biederman (MAD to Chicago Tribune; Comedy Store LA to Double Door Chicago)! This series watches it grow, from traditional Limerick per day to plug hosting 1999's 10th National Poetry Slam: Limerick Slam, to noted media source (TV, radio, print) with anti-partisan commentary section as Limericks, too, evolved to include news and human experience.

This POV Big Rehab tour tells the Other Side of our Sacred Recovery Cow. Follow 23-year-old free-thinker Boris, and a diverse band of fellow 'Habbers (half on repeat stints), as he's floored to find 12-Step religious indoctrination via a 20th Century hospital. Desperate to quit, fearing for his very life, Boris learns he must recover by rejecting the Program, rather than through cliche acceptance.

The alt-true story of a chance Chicago encounter with President Trump, soon after his 2017 inauguration. In this tribute to New Journalists of the 1960s and '70s, especially Hunter S. Thompson, Trump hides out, and parties down, in "fringe famous" author, performer, etc. John "Sloop" Biederman's home. In Gonzo style, the tale blends fact and fiction not to deceive, but to pursue Higher Truth.

Taking up the charge to study discourses of marginalized groups, while simultaneously extending scholarship about Latina/os in the field of Communication, Latina/o Discourse in Vernacular Spaces: Somos de Una Voz? provides the most current work examining the vernacular voices of Latina/os. The editors of this diverse collection structure the book along four topics-Locating Foundations, Citizenship and Belonging, The Politics of Self-Representation, and Trans/National Voces

Intro/preview to "The Cosmic Misadventures of Floyd Pinkerton" (CMFP) comic, rock space opera novel/series--from John "Sloop" Biederman, fringe famous humorist and professional idiot! (The latter thanks to his paid--aka "professional"--features sold to MAD Magazine.)An early version of the first novel's start finds hard-drinking, cigar-smoking Floyd Pinkerton spiraling out of control in an unknown planet's atmosphere. Through flashbacks, readers learn that Floyd stole the spacecraf...

"Scanning the maddening scene around her, Trisha sighed under her breath, 'So it has come to pass... Hell is delivered to Heaven's heights. Look and see! I am Death, Destruction my lover! Today I set the universe ablaze. Phoenix will burn, and the gods will bow low to the Children of Damnation!'"Phoenix... Across the globe, legends of old tell of a majestic, beautiful bird known from antiquity, its age measured in centuries and beyond...a symbol of peace and justice, dying in flame...

Jake Greenwood is your average, wannabe war hero up until a head injury causes him to forget his most cherished memories. Armed with only his name and a few personal belongings, Jake must fight his amnesia while he tries to remember not only more about himself, but what happened at the time of his injury. As Jake struggles to reclaim his memory, a pressing question can be asked: Will Jake be successful in remembering who he is?

A young woman is haunted by her phone. Photos that she never took, which reveal images of her working on her computer show up on the phone. Is there a night stalker following her around? Or is there something even more sinister lurking about her apartment?