Rethinking Elvis

Mark Duffett is Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Chester. After receiving degrees from Oxford University and the University of British Columbia, he completed his doctorate on Elvis fandom at the University of Wales in 1999. Since then, Dr. Duffett has established himself as an international scholar with keynotes at conferences in Finland, Portugal, and La Nouvelle Sorbonne in Paris. He has written for The Guardian, and been quoted in Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and The New York Times. His books include Understanding Fandom (2013), Counting Down Elvis (2018), and Elvis: Roots, Image, Comeback, Phenomenon (2020).

The academics here do not rethink Elvis Presley so much as re-place him: the view from Denmark and Cold War Europe meeting today's Tennessee Presley, where 'Are You Lonesome' is sung in the dark for tourists in Nashville's Studio B and Memphis cops brutally repress a Black Lives Matter protest in front of Graceland. Greil Marcus's Mystery Train listed Elvis variants as an act of prose wizardry. This Bubba Ho-Tep-worthy book of 'unproductions' catalogs a Presley multiverse, with movies never made, stories half-attributed, and identities barely glimpsed.

• 1. Elvis - Other Stories to Tell, Mark Duffett 2. Elvis Presley and the Irrepressible Influence of Southern Evangelicalism, James Goff 3. Old Habits Die Hard - Elvis, or the Burden of a Southern Identity, Michael T. Bertrand 4. Mixing Up Elvis, Sean Redmond 5. Elvis, Race, and the Unity of Complimentary Genius, Cheryl S. Carr 6. Hypersensitive Youth and the Meanings of Elvis in 1950s Denmark, Bertel Nygaard and Rasmus Rosenørn 7. Elvis Outside the USA - A Dark Shadow in the Early Italian Cultural Cold War, Marilisa Merolla 8. An American Cultural Weapon? The Impact of Elvis in 1950s Cold War Europe, Mathias Haeussler 9. Gate People - Fan History Before Elvis Heritage at Graceland, Mark Duffett 10. The American Dream? Elvis Presley, William Eggleston and the "Lost" Photographs of Graceland, Johnny Hopkins 11. Elvis and Musical Spaces - What the King means to Nashville Tourism, Robert Fry 12. A Star is Imagined - The "Unproduction" of Elvis Presley's Film Career, Landon Palmer 13. Posthumous Representations of Elvis - From Cultural Icon to Transproperty, June M. Madeley and Daniel Downes 14. Operation Blue Suede Shoes - Black Lives Matter and the Meaning of Elvis in Contemporary Memphis, Amanda Nell Edgar 15. The Future of Elvis Studies, Mark Duffett Index