The Beat Generation questioned mid-twentieth century America and sought the margins of society. This book analyzes the literature and lifestyles of the Beat authors Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg in regard to Victor Turner’s anthropological studies. The Beats separated from society by willingly entering the rites of passage. Liminal symbolism is apparent in their literature such as in movement, time, space, pilgrimages, and monstrosities. In their liminal stage, the...

The comic book naratives of superheroes wrestle with profound and disturbing issues in original ways: the definitions of good and evil, the limits of violence as an effective means, the perils of enforcing justice outside the law, the metaphysics of personal identity, and the definition of humanity.Superheroes and Philosophy tackles these and other philosophical questions in an intellectual yet engaging way suitable for any comic book fan.

The third edition of Bill Nichols's best-selling text provides an up-to-date introduction to the most important issues in documentary history and criticism. A new chapter, "I Want to Make a Documentary: Where Do I Start?" guides readers through the steps of planning and preproduction and includes an example of a project proposal for a film that went on to win awards at major festivals. Designed for students in any field that makes use of visual evidence and persuasive strategies, Introduct...

I**ntroduction to Film Studies is a comprehensive textbook for students of cinema.This completely revised and updated fifth edition guides students through the key issues and concepts in film studies, traces the historical development of film and introduces some of the worlds key national cinemas. A range of theories and theorists are presented from Formalism to Feminism, from Eisenstein to Deleuze. Each chapter is written by a subject specialist, including two new authors...

A Comics Studies Reader offers the best of the new comics scholarship in nearly thirty essays on a wide variety of such comics forms as gag cartoons, editorial cartoons, comic strips, comic books, manga, and graphic novels.The anthology covers the pioneering work of Rodolphe Töpffer, the Disney comics of Carl Barks, and the graphic novels of Art Spiegelman and Chris Ware, as well as Peanuts, romance comics, and superheroes. It explores the stylistic achievements o...

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 ...

Film is considered by some to be the most dominant art form of the twentieth century. It is many things, but it has become above all a means of telling stories through images and sounds. The stories are often offered to us as quite false, frankly and beautifully fantastic, and they are sometimes insistently said to be true. But they are stories in both cases, and there are very few films, even in avant-garde art, that don't imply or quietly slip into narrative. This story element is import...

On the surface, the relationship between comics and the ‘high’ arts once seemed simple; comic books and strips could be mined for inspiration, but were not themselves considered legitimate art objects. Though this traditional distinction has begun to erode, the worlds of comics and art continue to occupy vastly different social spaces.Comics Versus Art examines the relationship between comics and the most important institutions of the art world, including museums, auction ...

The phrase "beat generation"—introduced by Jack Kerouac in 1948—characterized the underground, nonconformist youths who gathered in New York City at that time. Together, these writers, artists, and activists created an inimitably American cultural phenomenon that would have a global influence. In their constant search for meaning, the Beats struggled with anxiety, alienation, and their role as the pioneers of the cultural revolution of the 1960s. The Philosophy of the Beats explor...

Increasingly, thinking Christians are examining the influential role that movies play in our cultural dialogue. Reel Spirituality successfully heightens readers' sensitivity to the theological truths and statements about the human condition expressed through modern cinema. This second edition cites 200 new movies and encourages readers to ponder movie themes that permeate our culture as well as motion pictures that have demonstrated power to shape our perceptions of everything fro...

An "entertaining" study of the enduring concept of coolness, and the mix of cultures and historical events that shaped it ( The New York Times).Cool. It was a new word and a new way to be, and in a single generation, it became the supreme compliment of American culture. The Origins of Cool in Postwar America uncovers the hidden history of this concept and its new set of codes that came to define a global attitude and style. As Joel Dinerst...

Over the course of his career Werner Herzog, known for such visionary masterpieces as Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972) and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974), has directed almost sixty films, roughly half of which are documentaries. And yet, in a statement delivered during a public appearance in 1999, the filmmaker declared: “There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached on...