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Image one: E-book titled Dead Funny: The Humor of American Horror (2023) - synopsis: Horror films strive to make audiences scream, but they also garner plenty of laughs. In fact, there is a long tradition of horror directors who are fluent in humor, from James Whale to John Landis to Jordan Peele. So how might horror and humor overlap more than we would expect? Dead Funny locates humor as a key element in the American horror film, one that is not merely used for extraneous “comic relief” moments but often serves to underscore major themes, intensify suspense, and disorient viewers. Each chapter focuses on a different comic style or device, from the use of funny monsters and scary clowns in movies like A Nightmare on Elm Street to the physical humor and slapstick in movies ranging from The Evil Dead to Final Destination.
Image two: E-book titled Eaters of the Dead: Myths and Realities of Cannibal Monsters (2021) - synopsis: Spanning myth, history, and contemporary culture, a terrifying and illuminating excavation of the meaning of cannibalism. Every culture has monsters that eat us, and every culture repels in horror when we eat ourselves. From Grendel to medieval Scottish cannibal Sawney Bean, and from the Ghuls of ancient Persia to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, tales of being consumed are both universal and universally terrifying. In this book, Kevin J. Wetmore Jr. explores the full range of monsters that eat the dead: ghouls, cannibals, wendigos, and other beings that feast on human flesh. Moving from myth through history to contemporary popular culture, Wetmore considers everything from ancient Greek myths of feeding humans to the gods, through sky burial in Tibet and Zoroastrianism, to actual cases of cannibalism in modern societies.
Image one: E-book titled Beyond the Night: Creatures of Life, Death, and the In-Between (2015) - synopsis: From Beowulf and Buffy, to Freddy Krueger and Frankenstein’s Monster, this collection highlights different aspects of the monstrous, and discusses various ways in which they can be read, discussed, and understood. What does the mother in Beowulf really represent? How can the character of Zoey Redbird really be understood? What is the importance of memories in Buffy the Vampire Slayer? And what should we make of Terry Pratchett’s undead creatures? And what role does the children-friendly vampire play? Beyond the Night offers a range of insights into these topics, as well as many more.
Image two: E-book titled The Vampire: A New History (2018) - synopsis: Published to mark the bicentenary of John Polidori’s publication of The Vampyre, Nick Groom’s detailed new account illuminates the complex history of the iconic creature. The vampire first came to public prominence in the early eighteenth century, when Enlightenment science collided with Eastern European folklore. Groom accordingly traces the vampire from its role as a monster embodying humankind’s fears, to that of an unlikely hero for the marginalized and excluded in the twenty-first century. Drawing on literary and artistic representations, as well as medical, forensic, empirical, and sociopolitical perspectives, this rich and eerie history presents the vampire as a strikingly complex being that has been used to express the traumas and contradictions of the human condition.
Image one: E-book titled The Horrors of War: The Undead on the Battlefield (2015) - synopsis: Battlefields have traditionally been considered places where the spirits of the dead linger, and popular culture brings those thoughts to life. Supernatural tales of war told in print, on screen, and in other media depict angels, demons, and legions of the undead fighting against—or alongside—human soldiers. Ghostly war ships and phantom aircraft carry on their never-to-be-completed missions, and the spirits—sometimes corpses—of dead soldiers return to confront the enemies who killed them, comrades who betrayed them, or leaders who sacrificed them. In Horrors of War: The Undead on the Battlefield, Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper have assembled essays that explore the meaning and significance of these tales.
Image two: E-book titled The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film (2015) - synopsis: An undying procession of sons of Dracula and daughters of darkness has animated the horror film genre from the beginning. Indeed, in this pioneering exploration of the cinema of fear, Barry Keith Grant and twenty other film critics posit that horror is always rooted in gender, particularly in anxieties about sexual difference and gender politics. The book opens with the influential theoretical works of Linda Williams, Carol J. Clover, and Barbara Creed. Writing across a full range of critical methods from classic psychoanalysis to feminism and postmodernism, they balance theoretical generalizations with close readings of films and discussions of figures associated with the genre.
Image one: E-book titled The Bell Witch in Myth and Memory: From Local Legend to International Folktale (2023) - synopsis: The legend of the ghost who terrorized the Bell family of Adams, Tennessee, is one of the best-known pieces of folklore in American storytelling—featured around the globe in popular-culture references as varied as a 1930s radio skit and a 1980s song from a Danish heavy metal band. Legend has it that “Old Kate” was investigated even by the likes of future president Andrew Jackson, who was reported to have said, “I would rather fight the British ten times over than to ever face the Bell Witch again.” While dozens of books and articles have thoroughly analyzed this intriguing tale, this book breaks new ground by exploring the oral traditions associated with the poltergeist and demonstrating her regional, national, and even international sweep.
Image two: E-book titled Open Graves, Open Minds: Representations of Vampires and the Undead from the Enlightenment to the Present Day (2013) - synopsis: This collection of interconnected essays relates the Undead in literature, art and other media to questions concerning gender, race, genre, technology, consumption, and social change. A coherent narrative follows Enlightenment studies of the vampire’s origins in folklore and folk panics, the sources of vampire fiction, through Romantic incarnations in Byron and Polidori to Le Fanu’s Carmilla. Further essays discuss the Undead in the context of Dracula, fin-de-siècle decadence, Nazi Germany, and early cinematic treatments. The rise of the sympathetic vampire is charted from Coppola’s film, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight.
Image one: E-book titled Univision, Telemundo, and the Rise of Spanish-Language Television in the United States (2020) - synopsis: In the most comprehensive history of Spanish-language television in the United States to date, Craig Allen traces the development of two prominent yet little-studied powerhouses, Univision and Telemundo. Allen tells the inside story of how these networks fought enormous odds to rise as giants of mass communication within an English-dominated society, beginning in San Antonio, Texas, in 1961 with the launch of the first Spanish-language station in the country.
Image two: E-book titled Sounds of Belonging: U.S. Spanish-Language Radio and Public Advocacy (2014) - synopsis: Bringing together theories on the immigration experience with sound and radio studies, Dolores Inés Casillas documents how Latinos form listening relationships with Spanish-language radio programming. Using a vast array of sources, from print culture and industry journals to sound archives of radio programming, she reflects on institutional growth, the evolution of programming genres, and reception by the radio industry and listeners to map the trajectory of Spanish-language radio, from its grassroots origins to the current corporate-sponsored business it has become.
Image one: E-book titled Music Is Power: Popular Songs, Social Justice, and the Will To Change - synopsis: Popular music has long been a powerful force for social change. Protest songs have served as anthems regarding war, racism, sexism, ecological destruction, and so many other crucial issues. Music Is Power takes us on a guided tour through the past one hundred years of politically conscious music, from Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie to Green Day and NWA. Covering a wide variety of genres, including reggae, country, metal, psychedelia, rap, punk, folk, and soul, Brad Schreiber demonstrates how musicians can take a variety of approaches-- angry rallying cries, mournful elegies to the victims of injustice, or even humorous mockeries of authority--to fight for a fairer world. While shining a spotlight on Phil Ochs, Gil Scott-Heron, the Dead Kennedys and other seminal, politicized artists, he also gives readers a new appreciation of classic acts such as Lesley Gore, James Brown, and Black Sabbath, who overcame limitations in their industry to create politically potent music.
Image two: E-book titled We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War - synopsis: In We Gotta Get Out of This Place, Doug Bradley and Craig Werner place popular music at the heart of the American experience in Vietnam. They explore how and why U.S. troops turned to music as a way of connecting to each other and the World back home and of coping with the complexities of the war they had been sent to fight. They also demonstrate that music was important for every group of Vietnam veterans--black and white, Latino and Native American, men and women, officers and "grunts"--whose personal reflections drive the book's narrative.
Image one: E-book titled The Shaman's Mirror: Visionary Art of the Huichol (2012) - synopsis: Huichol Indian yarn paintings are one of the world’s great indigenous arts, sold around the world and advertised as authentic records of dreams and visions of the shamans. Using glowing colored yarns, the Huichol Indians of Mexico paint the mystical symbols of their culture—the hallucinogenic peyote cactus, the blue deer-spirit who appears to the shamans as they croon their songs around the fire in all-night ceremonies deep in the Sierra Madre mountains, and the pilgrimages to sacred sites, high in the central Mexican desert of Wirikuta. Hope MacLean provides the first comprehensive study of Huichol yarn paintings, from their origins as sacred offerings to their transformation into commercial art. Drawing on twenty years of ethnographic fieldwork, she interviews Huichol artists who have innovated important themes and styles.
Image two: Destruction Was My Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century (2015) - synopsis: In 1916, as World War I raged around them, a group of bohemians gathered at a small nightclub in Zurich, Switzerland for a series of bizarre performances. Three readers simultaneously recited a poem in three languages; a monocle-wearing teenager performed a spell from New Zealand; another young man flung bits of papier-mâché into the air and glued them into place where they landed. One of these artists called the sessions “both buffoonery and a requiem mass.” Soon they would be known by a more evocative name: Dada. In Destruction Was My Beatrice, modernist scholar Jed Rasula presents the first narrative history of the emergence, decline, and legacy of Dada, showing how this strange artistic phenomenon spread across Europe and then the world in the wake of the Great War, fundamentally reshaping modern culture in ways we’re still struggling to understand today.
Image one: E-book titled American Poetry in Performance: From Walt Whitman to Hip Hop (2011) - synopsis: American Poetry in Performance: From Walt Whitman to Hip Hop is the first book to trace a comprehensive history of performance poetry in America, covering 150 years of literary history from Walt Whitman through the rap-meets-poetry scene. It reveals how the performance of poetry is bound up with the performance of identity and nationality in the modern period and carries its own shifting cultural politics. This book stands at the crossroads of the humanities and the social sciences; it is a book of literary and cultural criticism that deals squarely with issues of “performance,” a concept that has attained great importance in the disciplines of anthropology and sociology and has generated its own distinct field of performance studies.
Image two: E-book titled Stop, Think, Go, Do: How Typography and Graphic Design Influence Behavior (2012) - synopsis: This revolutionary guide is not only the first to look at how typography in design creates a call to action, but it also explores type and image as language. Stop, Think, Go, Do is packed with arresting imagery from around the world that influences human behavior. Page after page, you’ll find innovative messages that advocate, advise caution, educate, entertain, express, inform, play, and transform.
Image one: Women's History Month
Image two: E-book titled Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World's Most Famous Heroine (2014) - synopsis: With her golden lasso and her bullet-deflecting bracelets, Wonder Woman is a beloved icon of female strength in a world of male superheroes. But this close look at her history portrays a complicated heroine who is more than just a female Superman. Exploring this lost history as well as her modern incarnations adds new dimensions to the world’s most beloved female character, and Wonder Woman Unbound delves into her comic book and its spin-offs as well as the myriad motivations of her creators to showcase the peculiar journey that led to Wonder Woman’s iconic status.
Image three E-book titled Woman, Watching: Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and the Songbirds of Pimisi Bay (2022) - synopsis: From award-winning author Merilyn Simonds, a remarkable biography of an extraordinary woman ― a Swedish aristocrat who survived the Russian Revolution to become an internationally renowned naturalist, one of the first to track the mid-century decline of songbirds. Referred to as a Canadian Rachel Carson, Louise de Kiriline Lawrence lived and worked in an isolated log cabin near North Bay. After her husband was murdered by Bolsheviks, she refused her Swedish privilege and joined the Canadian Red Cross, visiting her northern Ontario patients by dogsled. She later retreated to her wilderness cabin, where she devoted herself to studying the birds that nested in her forest. Author of six books and scores of magazine stories, de Kiriline Lawrence and her “loghouse nest” became a Mecca for international ornithologists.
Image one: E-book titled Stages of Struggle and Celebration: A Production History of Black Theatre in Texas (2016) - synopsis: Drawing on troves of archival materials from numerous statewide sources, Stages of Struggle and Celebration captures the important legacies of the dramatic arts in a historical field that has paid most of its attention to black musicians. Setting the stage, the authors retrace the path of the cakewalk and African-inspired dance as forerunners to formalized productions at theaters in the major metropolitan areas. From Houston’s Ensemble and Encore Theaters to the Jubilee in Fort Worth, gospel stage plays of the Black Academy of Arts and Letters in Dallas, as well as San Antonio’s Hornsby Entertainment Theater Company and Renaissance Guild, concluding with ProArts Collective in Austin, Stages of Struggle and Celebration features founding narratives, descriptions of key players and memorable productions, and enlightening discussions of community reception and the business challenges faced by each theatre.
Image two: E-book titled Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era (2014) - synopsis: Highlighting the accomplishments of black women who sought to create positive change after the end of WWI, this reference work includes representatives not only from the literary scene but also: activists, actresses, artists, educators, entrepreneurs, musicians, political, leaders, and scholars. By acknowledging the women who played vital—if not always recognized—roles in this movement, this book shows how their participation helped set the stage for the continued transformation of the black community well into the 1960s.
Image one: E-book titled Black Women in Sequence: Re-Inking Comics, Graphic Novels, and Anime (2015) - synopsis: Black Women in Sequence takes readers on a search for women of African descent in comics subculture. From the 1971 appearance of the Skywald Publications character “the Butterfly” - the first Black female superheroine in a comic book - to contemporary comic books, graphic novels, film, manga, and video gaming, a growing number of Black women are becoming producers, viewers, and subjects of sequential art. As the first detailed investigation of Black women’s participation in comic art, Black Women in Sequence examines the representation, production, and transnational circulation of women of African descent in the sequential art world.
Image two: E-book titled Marvel's Black Panther: A Comic Book Biography, from Stan Lee to Ta-Nehisi Coates (2018) - synopsis: Created by Marvel Comics Legends Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the Black Panther is considered the first Black superhero in American mainstream comics. Through a textual analysis, this book narrates the history of the character from his first appearance in 1966—the same year, the Black Panther Party was formed in Oakland, California—through Ta-Nehisi Coates’ version in 2015
Image one: E-book titled Indigenous Pop: Native American Music from Jazz to Hip Hop (2016) - synopsis: Popular music compels, it entertains, and it has the power to attract and move audiences. With that in mind, the editors of Indigenous Pop showcase the contributions of American Indian musicians to popular forms of music, including jazz, blues, country-western, rock and roll, reggae, punk, and hip hop. Arranged both chronologically and according to popular generic forms, the book gives Indigenous pop a broad new meaning.
Image two: E-book titled I Am Where I Come From: Native American College Students and Graduates Tell Their Life Stories (2017) - synopsis: I Am Where I Come From presents the autobiographies of thirteen Native American undergraduates and graduates of Dartmouth College, ten of them current and recent students. The autobiographies contained in this book explore issues of native identity, adjustment to the college environment, cultural and familial influences, and academic and career aspirations.
Image one: E-book titled The Rise and Fall of Early American Magazine Culture (2012) - synopsis: Countering assumptions about early American print culture and challenging our scholarly fixation on the novel, Jared Gardner reimagines the early American magazine as a rich literary culture that operated as a model for nation-building by celebrating editorship over authorship and serving as a virtual salon in which citizens were invited to share their different perspectives. The Rise and Fall of Early American Magazine Culture reexamines early magazines and their reach to show how magazine culture was multivocal and presented a porous distinction between author and reader, as opposed to novel culture, which imposed a one-sided authorial voice and restricted the agency of the reader.
Image two: E-book titled News Parade: The American Newsreel and the World as Spectacle (2020) - synopsis: A fascinating look at the United States’ conflicted relationship with news and the media, through the lens of the newsreel When weekly newsreels launched in the early twentieth century, they offered the U.S. public the first weekly record of events that symbolized “indisputable evidence” of the news. In News Parade, Joseph Clark examines the history of the newsreel and how it changed the way Americans saw the world. He combines an examination of the newsreel’s methods of production, distribution, and reception with an analysis of its representational strategies to understand the newsreel’s place in the history of twentieth-century American culture and film history. Clark focuses on the sound newsreel of the 1930s and 1940s, arguing that it represents a crucial moment in the development of a spectacular society where media representations of reality became more fully integrated into commodity culture.
Image one: E-book titled The Wedding Heard 'round the World: America's First Gay Marriage (2016) - synopsis: On September 3, 1971, Michael McConnell and Jack Baker exchanged vows in the first legal same-sex wedding in the United States. Their remarkable story is told here for the first time—a unique account of the passion and energy of the gay liberation movement in the sixties and seventies. At the dawn of the modern gay movement (while New York’s Stonewall riots and San Francisco’s emerging political activism bloomed), these two young men, themselves gay rights activists, insisted on making their commitment a legal reality.
Image two: E-book titled Intersex Narratives: Shifts in the Representation of Intersex Lives in North American Literature and Popular Culture (2016) - synopsis: This book explores representations of intersex persons, intersex communities, and intersex as a cultural concept and knowledge category by focusing on the emergence of intersex autobiographical stories and cultural productions like novels and TV series. The study turns its attention to the significant paradigm shift in the narratives on intersex that occurred within early 1990s intersex activism in response to biopolitical regulations of intersex bodies.
Image one: E-book titled Flaming Classics: Queering the Film Canon (2000) - synopsis: In his wicked readings of film favorites, Alexander Doty takes us to the queer side of criticism, offering fresh and controversial views of the stars, the plots, and the directors of our best loved and most iconic films. Arguing against the assumptions that only explicitly gay films are subject to gay readings, he looks at six classics and reads them for their queer potential. With both affection and scholarly rigor, he teases out the lesbian fantasy inherent in The Wizard of Oz, the gay nightmare narrative of The Cabinet of Dr. Calagari, the bisexual erotics of Gentlemen Prefer Blonds, the queerness of Norman Bates, and more.
Image two: E-book titled Transgender Cinema (2019) - synopsis: Transgender Cinema gives readers the big picture of how trans people have been depicted on screen. Beginning with a history of trans tropes in classic Hollywood cinema, from comic drag scenes in Chaplin’s The Masquerader to Garbo’s androgynous Queen Christina, and from psycho killer queers to The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s outrageous queen, it examines a plethora of trans portrayals that subsequently emerged from varied media outlets, including documentary films, television serials, and world cinema. Along the way, it analyzes milestones in trans representation, like The Crying Game, Boys Don’t Cry, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and A Fantastic Woman.
Image one: E-book titled Twining: Critical and Creative Approaches to Hypertext Narratives (2021) - synopsis: Hypertext is now commonplace: links and linking structure nearly all of our experiences online. Yet the literary, as opposed to commercial, potential of hypertext has receded. One of the few tools still focused on hypertext as a means for digital storytelling is Twine, a platform for building choice-driven stories without relying heavily on code. In Twining, Anastasia Salter and Stuart Moulthrop lead readers on a journey at once technical, critical, contextual, and personal. The book’s chapters alternate careful, stepwise discussion of adaptable Twine projects, offer commentary on exemplary Twine works, and discuss Twine’s technological and cultural background. Beyond telling the story of Twine and how to make Twine stories, Twining reflects on the ongoing process of making.
Image two: E-book titled For Home and Country: World War I Propaganda on the Home Front (2010) - synopsis: World War I prompted the first massive organized propaganda campaign of the twentieth century. Posters, pamphlets, and other media spread fear about the “Hun,” who was often depicted threatening American families in their homes, while additional campaigns encouraged Americans and their allies to support the war effort. With most men actively involved in warfare, women and children became a special focus—and a tool—of social manipulation during the war. For Home and Country examines the propaganda that targeted noncombatants on the home front in the United States and Europe during World War I. By examining a diverse collection of literary texts, songs, posters, and toys, Celia Malone Kingsbury reveals how these pervasive materials were used to fight the war’s cultural battle.
Image one: Women in Mongol Iran: The Khatuns, 1206 to 1335 (2017) - synopsis: Explores the political, economic and religious role of women in the Mongol empire This book shows the development of women’s status in the Mongol Empire from its original homeland in Mongolia up to the end of the Ilkhanate of Iran in 1335. Taking a thematic approach, the chapters show a coherent progression of this development and contextualise the evolution of the role of women in medieval Mongol society.
Image two: E-book titled Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World's Most Famous Heroine (2014) - synopsis: This close look at Wonder Woman’s history portrays a complicated heroine who is more than just a female Superman with a golden lasso and bullet-deflecting bracelets. The original Wonder Woman was ahead of her time, advocating female superiority and the benefits of matriarchy in the 1940s. At the same time, her creator filled the comics with titillating bondage imagery, and Wonder Woman was tied up as often as she saved the world. In the 1950s, Wonder Woman begrudgingly continued her superheroic mission, wishing she could settle down with her boyfriend instead, all while continually hinting at hidden lesbian leanings. Exploring this lost history adds new dimensions to the world’s most beloved female character, and Wonder Woman Unbound delves into her comic book and its spin-offs as well as the myriad motivations of her creators to showcase the peculiar journey that led to Wonder Woman’s iconic status.
Image one: E-book titled Indigenous Pop: Native American Music from Jazz to Hip Hop (2016) - synopsis: Popular music compels, it entertains, and it has the power to attract and move audiences. With that in mind, the editors of Indigenous Pop showcase the contributions of American Indian musicians to popular forms of music, including jazz, blues, country-western, rock and roll, reggae, punk, and hip hop. From Joe Shunatona and the United States Indian Reservation Orchestra to Jim Pepper, from Buffy Saint-Marie to Robbie Robertson, from Joy Harjo to Lila Downs, Indigenous Pop vividly addresses the importance of Native musicians and popular musical genres, establishing their origins and discussing what they represent.
Image two: E-book titled How Mockingbirds Are: O'odham Ritual Orations (2011) - synopsis: The power of mockingbirds and the enduring significance of indigenous ceremonial speeches are deftly revealed in this brilliant analysis of ritual orations created and delivered by the O'odham people (also known as the Pima-Papago) who lived along the Akimel rivers and across the arid expanses and mountains of the desert of southern Arizona and northern Sonora. Drawing upon a rich reservoir of O'odham oral traditions and ceremonial performances, a meticulous deciphering of particular texts, and an insightful assessment of the impact of Christianity upon the O'odham people, Donald Bahr offers a brilliant analysis of why some indigenous stories cease to be relevant and told.
Image one: E-book titled Abominable Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids (2013) - synopsis: Throughout our history, humans have been captivated by mythic beasts and legendary creatures. Tales of Bigfoot, the Yeti, and the Loch Ness monster are part of our collective experience. Now comes a book from two dedicated investigators that explores and elucidates the fascinating world of cryptozoology. Daniel Loxton and Donald R. Prothero have written an entertaining, educational, and definitive text on cryptids, presenting the arguments both for and against their existence and systematically challenging the pseudoscience that perpetuates their myths.
Image two: E-book titled Recovering 1940s Horror Cinema: Traces of a Lost Decade (2014) - synopsis: This collection revises, reframes, and deconstructs persistent critical binaries that have labelled 1940s horror as somehow inferior to a “classical” period or “canonical” mode of horror in the 1930s, especially as represented by the monster films of Universal Studios. The book’s four sections re-evaluate the historical, political, economic, and cultural factors informing 1940s horror cinema. Chapters focus on Gothic and Grand Guignol traditions operating in forties horror cinema; 1940s proto-slasher films; the independent horrors of the Poverty Row studios; and critical reevaluations of neglected hybrid films such as The Vampire’s Ghost (1945) and “slippery” auteurs such as Robert Siodmak and Sam Neufield.
Image one: E-book titled The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film (2015) - synopsis: This classic film studies text opens with the influential theoretical works of Linda Williams, Carol J. Clover, and Barbara Creed. Subsequent essays explore the history of the genre, from classic horror such as King Kong and Bride of Frankenstein to the more recent Fatal Attraction and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Other topics covered include the work of horror auteurs David Cronenberg, Dario Argento, and George Romero; the Aliens trilogy; and the importance of gender in relation to horror marketing and reception.
Image two: E-book titled Queer Horror Film and Television: Sexuality and Masculinity at the Margins (2016) - synopsis: This book focuses mainly on representations of masculinity, and gay male spectatorship in queer horror films and television post-2000. In titling this sub-genre “queer horror,” Elliott-Smith designates horror that is crafted by male directors/producers who self-identify as gay, bi, queer, or transgendered and whose work features homoerotic, or explicitly homosexual, narratives with “out” gay characters. In terms of case studies, this book considers a variety of genres and forms from: video art horror; independently distributed exploitation films; queer Gothic soap operas; satirical horror comedies; low-budget slashers; and contemporary representations of gay zombies in film and television.
Image one: E-book titled Alien and Philosophy: I Infest, Therefore I Am (2017) - synopsis: Alien and Philosophy: I Infest, Therefore I Am presents a philosophical exploration of the world of Alien, the simultaneously horrifying and thought-provoking sci-fi horror masterpiece, and the film franchise it spawned. This text features contributions from an acclaimed team of scholars of philosophy and pop culture, led by highly experienced volume editors. Alien and Philosophy explores a huge range of topics that include the philosophy of fear; “just wars;” bio-weaponry; feminism and matriarchs; perfect killers; contagion; violation; employee rights; and Artificial Intelligence. Includes coverage of H.R. Giger’s aesthetics, the literary influences of H.P. Lovecraft, sci-fi and the legacy of Vietnam, and much more.
Image two: E-book titled Silent Hill: The Terror Engine (2012) - synopsis: Silent Hill: The Terror Engine is both a close analysis of the first three Silent Hill games and a general look at the whole series. Silent Hill, with its first title released in 1999, is one of the most influential of the horror video game series. Perron situates the games within the survival horror genre, both by looking at the history of the genre and by comparing Silent Hill with such important forerunners as Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil. Taking a transmedia approach and underlining the designer's cinematic and literary influences, he uses the narrative structure; the techniques of imagery, sound, and music employed; the game mechanics; and the fiction, artifact, and gameplay emotions elicited by the games to explore the specific fears survival horror games are designed to provoke and how the experience as a whole has made the Silent Hill series one of the major landmarks of video game history.
Image one: E-book titled Sounds of Belonging: U.S. Spanish-Language Radio and Public Advocacy (2014) - synopsis: The last two decades have produced continued Latino population growth, and marked shifts in both communications and immigration policy. Since the 1990s, Spanish-language radio has dethroned English-language radio stations in major cities across the United States, taking over the number one spot in Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, and New York City. Investigating the cultural and political history of U.S. Spanish-language broadcasts throughout the twentieth century, Sounds of Belonging reveals how these changes have helped Spanish-language radio secure its dominance in the major U.S. radio markets.
Image two: E-book titled The Revolutionary Imaginations of Greater Mexico: Chicana/o Radicalism, Solidarity Politics, and Latin American Social Movements (2016) - synopsis: Bringing to life the stories of political teatristas, feminists, gunrunners, labor organizers, poets, journalists, ex-prisoners, and other revolutionaries, The Revolutionary Imaginations of Greater Mexico examines the inspiration Chicanas/os found in social movements in Mexico and Latin America from 1971 to 1979. Drawing on fifteen years of interviews and archival research, including examinations of declassified government documents from Mexico, this study uncovers encounters between activists and artists across borders while sharing a socialist-oriented, anticapitalist vision.
Image one: E-book titled Mexicana Fashions: Politics, Self-Adornment, and Identity Construction (2020) - synopsis: Collecting the perspectives of scholars who reflect on their own relationships to particular garments, analyze the politics of dress, and examine the role of consumerism and entrepreneurialism in the production of creating and selling a style, Mexicana Fashions examines and searches for meaning in these visible, performative aspects of identity.
Image two: E-book titled The Chicana/o Hip Hop Nation: Politics of a New Millennial Mestizaje (2013) - synopsis: Far from antiquated concepts of mestizaje, recent scholarship has shown that Mexicana/o and Chicana/o culture is a mixture of indigenous, African, and Spanish and other European peoples and cultures. No one reflects this rich blend of cultures better than Chicano/a rappers, whose lyrics and iconography can help to deepen our understanding of what it means to be Chicano/a or Mexicano/a today. While some identify as Mexican mestizos, others identify as indigenous people or base their identities on their class and racial/ethnic makeup. No less significant is the intimate level of contact between Chicano/as and black Americans. Via a firm theoretical foundation, Pancho McFarland explores the language and ethos of Chicano/a and Mexicano/a hip hop and sheds new light on three distinct identities reflected in the music: indigenous/Mexica, Mexican nationalist/immigrant, and street hopper.
Image descriptions
Image one: E-book titled Abominable Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids (2013) - synopsis: Daniel Loxton and Donald R. Prothero have written an entertaining, educational, and definitive text on cryptids, presenting the arguments both for and against their existence and systematically challenging the pseudoscience that perpetuates their myths. After examining the nature of science and pseudoscience and their relation to cryptozoology, Loxton and Prothero take on Bigfoot; the Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, and its cross-cultural incarnations; the Loch Ness monster and its highly publicized sightings; the evolution of the Great Sea Serpent; and Mokele Mbembe, or the Congo dinosaur.
Image two: E-book titled Silent Hill: The Terror Engine (2012) - synopsis: Silent Hill: The Terror Engine is both a close analysis of the first three Silent Hill games and a general look at the whole series. Taking a transmedia approach and underlining the designer’s cinematic and literary influences, this book uses the narrative structure; the techniques of imagery, sound, and music employed; the game mechanics; and the fiction, artifact, and gameplay emotions elicited by the games to explore the specific fears survival horror games are designed to provoke and how the experience as a whole has made the Silent Hill series one of the major landmarks of video game history.
Image one: E-book titled Haunted Halls: Ghostlore of American College Campuses (2007) - synopsis: In Haunted Halls, the first book-length interpretive study of college ghostlore, Elizabeth Tucker presents campus ghost stories from the mid-1960s to 2006, with special attention to stories told by twenty-first-century students through e-mail and instant messages. Her approach combines social, psychological, and cultural analysis, with close attention to students’ own explanations of the significance of spectral phenomena.
Image two: E-book titled: Doom: Scary Dark Fast (2013) - synopsis: This book takes a look at the early days of first-person gaming and the video game studio system. It discusses the prototypes and the groundbreaking technology that drove the game forward and offers a detailed analysis of gameplay and level design. Pinchbeck also examines DOOM’s contributions to wider gaming culture, such as online multiplay and the modding community, and the first-person gaming genre, focusing on DOOM’s status as a foundational title and the development of the genre since 1993.
Image one: E-book titled Mindful Twenty-Something: Life Skills to Handle Stress and Everything Else (2016) - synopsis: Presents a unique, evidence-based approach to help you make important life decisions with clarity and confidence. As a twenty-something, you may feel like you are being pulled in dozen different directions. The Koru Mindfulness program, developed at Duke University and already in use on numerous college campuses and in treatment centers across the country, is the only evidence-based mindfulness training program for young adults that has been empirically proven to have significant benefits for sleep, perceived stress, and self-compassion. Now, with The Mindful Twenty-Something, this popular program is accessible to all young adults struggling with stress.
Image two: E-book titled Studying Film with Andre Bazin (2019) - synopsis: Offers an entirely original interpretation of major concepts from Bazin’s legacy, such as auteur theory, realism, film language and the influence of film on other arts (poetry and painting in particular). By examining mostly unknown and uncollected texts, Blandine Joret explains Bazin’s methodology and adopts it in a contemporary reading, linking his ideas to major philosophical and scientific frameworks as well as more recent media practices such as advertising, CGI, 3D cinema and Virtual Reality.
Image three: E-book titled I Am Where I Come From: Native American College Students and Graduates Tell Their Life Stories (2017) - synopsis: Presents the autobiographies of thirteen Native American undergraduates and graduates of Dartmouth College, ten of them current and recent students. The autobiographies contained in I Am Where I Come From explore issues of native identity, adjustment to the college environment, cultural and familial influences, and academic and career aspirations.
Image one: E-book titled The Media and Communications Study Skills Student Guide (2019) - synopsis: All the tips, ideas and advice given to, and requested by, MA students in Media and Communications, are brought together in an easy-to-use accessible guide to help students study most effectively. Based upon many years of teaching study skills and hundreds of lecture slides and handouts this introduction covers a range of general and generic skills that the author relates specifically towards media and communications studies.
Image two: E-book titled Fundamental College Composition (2017) - synopsis: Provides a sub-structure of grammar study sufficient to bring a modern student to a basic understanding of the foundations of compositional language arts. It confronts struggling writers with their compositional shortcomings, presents them with a kit of fundamental grammatical tools, explains the tools' purposes and functions, and invites students to write, revise, and re-write in short bursts of directed prose. It avoids every intricacy of grammatical science that does not apply directly and practically to the production of clear, concise sentences and structured paragraphs.
Image one: E-book titled American Founders: How People of African Descent established Freedom in the New World (2018) - synopsis: Reveals men and women of African descent as key protagonists in the story of American democracy. It chronicles how Black people developed and defended New World settlements, undermined slavery, and championed freedom throughout the Americas from the 16th through the 20th century.
Image two: E-book titled We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War (2015) - synopsis: Places popular music at the heart of the American experience in Vietnam. This book explores how and why U.S. troops turned to music as a way of connecting to each other and the World back home and of coping with the complexities of the war they had been sent to fight. It also demonstrates that music was important for every group of Vietnam veterans -- black and white, Latino and Native American, men and women, officers and 'grunts' -- whose personal reflections drive the book's narrative.
Image one: E-book titled Kent State: Death and Dissent in the Long Sixties (2016) - synopsis: On May 4, 1970, National Guard troops opened fire on unarmed antiwar protesters at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four students and wounding nine others, including the author of this book. The shootings shocked the American public and triggered a nationwide wave of campus strikes and protests. Author Thomas M. Grace shows that the events of May 4 were not some tragic anomaly but were grounded in a tradition of student political activism that extended back to Ohio's labor battles of the 1950s.
Image two: E-book titled The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s (2004) - synopsis: The Last Great American Picture Show brings together essays by scholars and writers who chart the changing evaluations of the American cinema of the 1970s, sometimes referred to as the decade of the lost generation, but now more and more recognized as the first New Hollywood, without which the cinema of Francis Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, or Tim Burton could not have come into existence.
Image one: E-book titled Working for Yourself: Law and Taxes for Independent Contractors, Freelancers, and Gig Workers of All Types (2019) - synopsis: This excellent, well-organized reference will show you how to: decide the best form for your business (sole proprietor, LLC, or other); make sure you're paid in full and on time; pay estimated taxes and avoid trouble with the IRS; take advantage of all available tax deductions, including the 20% pass-through tax deduction for business owners; choose health, property, and other kinds of insurance; keep accurate records in case you get audited; and write legally binding contracts and letter agreements.
Image two: E-book titled The Work of Art: Value in Creative Careers (2017) - synopsis: In The Work of Art, Alison Gerber explores these art worlds to investigate who artists are (and who they're not), why they do the things they do, and whether a sense of vocational calling and the need to make a living are as incompatible as we've been led to believe. Listening to the stories of artists from across the United States, Gerber finds patterns of agreements and disagreements shared by art-makers from all walks of life. For professionals and hobbyists alike, the alliance of love and money has become central to contemporary art-making, and danger awaits those who fail to strike a balance between the two.
Image one: E-book titled Beyond the Finite: The Sublime in Art and Science (2011) - synopsis: The explorations within Beyond the Finite range from the images taken by the Hubble Telescope to David Bohm's quantum romanticism, from Kant and Burke to a "downward spiraling infinity" of the 21st century sublime, all lucid yet transcendent. Squarely positioned at the interface between science and art, this volume's chapters capture a remarkable variety of perspectives, with neuroscience, chemistry, astronomy, physics, film, painting and music discussed in relation to the sublime experience, topics surely to peak the interest of academics and students studying the sublime in various disciplines.
Image two: E-book titled Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art (2015) - synopsis: Medieval robots took such forms as talking statues, mechanical animals, and silent metal guardians; some served to entertain or instruct while others performed disciplinary or surveillance functions. Variously ascribed to artisanal genius, inexplicable cosmic forces, or demonic powers, these marvelous fabrications raised fundamental questions about knowledge, nature, and divine purpose in the Middle Ages. Medieval Robots recovers the forgotten history of fantastical, aspirational, and terrifying machines that captivated Europe in imagination and reality between the ninth and fourteenth centuries.
Image one: E-book titled Error: Glitch, Noise, and Jam in New Media Cultures (2012) - synopsis: Divided into three sections, Error brings together established critics and emerging voices to offer a significant contribution to the field of new media studies. In the first section, OC Hack, OCO contributors explore the ways in which errors, glitches, and failure provide opportunities for critical and aesthetic intervention within new media practices. In the second section, OC Game, OCO they examine how errors allow for intentional and accidental co-opting of rules and protocols toward unintended ends. The final section, OC Jam, OCO considers the role of error as both an inherent OC counter strategy OCO and a mode of tactical resistance within a network society.
Image two: E-book titled Historical Dictionary of Asian American Literature and Theater (2012) - synopsis: The Historical Dictionary of Asian American Literature and Theater covers history from 1887 to the present, in a chronology, and a dictionary with over 600 substantial and cross-referenced entries on authors, books, and genres as well as more general ones describing the historical background, cultural features, techniques and major theatres and clubs.
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Image one: E-book titled Visualizing the Street: New Practices of Documenting, Navigating, and Imagining the City (2019) - synopsis: From user-generated images of streets to professional architectural renderings, and from digital maps and drone footages to representations of invisible digital ecologies, this collection of essays analyses the emergent practices of visualizing the street. Visualizing the Street investigates the social and cultural significance of these new developments at the intersection of visual culture and urban space. The interdisciplinary essays provide new concepts, theories and research methods that combine close analyses of street images and imaginaries with the study of the practices of their production and circulation.
Image two: E-book titled Shadows of Reality: The Fourth Dimension in Relativity, Cubism, and Modern Thought (2006) - synopsis: In this insightful book, which is a revisionist math history as well as a revisionist art history, Tony Robbin, well known for his innovative computer visualizations of hyperspace, investigates different models of the fourth dimension and how these are applied in art and physics.
Image one: E-book titled Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era (2017) - synopsis: Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era profiles the most important figures of this cultural and intellectual movement. Highlighting the accomplishments of black women who sought to create positive change after the end of WWI, this reference work includes representatives not only from the literary scene but also activists, actresses, artists, educators, entrepreneurs, musicians, political leaders, and scholars.
Image two: E-book titled A Dictionary of Color (2004) - synopsis: This comprehensive resource explores every aspect of color and its many applications across the disciplines and through the ages. With more than 4,100 entries, this dictionary explores the language of color from historical, design, language, symbolic, literary, and commercial perspectives. Appendixes include adjectives of color, more than 1,000 colors arranged according to color groupings, and color phrases such as blue funk and scream blue murder.
