New Critical Perspectives on the Beatles

Kenneth Womack, Ph.D. is Dean of the Wayne D. McMurray School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Monmouth University, where he also serves as Professor of English. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including Long and Winding Roads: The Evolving Artistry of the Beatles (2007), the Cambridge Companion to the Beatles (2009), and The Beatles Encyclopedia: Everything Fab Four (2014). Womack is also the author of three award-winning novels, including John Doe No. 2 and the Dreamland Motel (2010), The Restaurant at the End of the World (2012), and Playing the Angel (2013). He serves as Editor of Interdisciplinary Literary Studies: A Journal of Criticism and Theory, and as Co-Editor of the English Association's Year's Work in English Studies. Katie Kapurch, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of English at Texas State University. She has published essays on popular youth culture in scholarly journals and edited collections. Katie is the author of a forthcoming monograph, Victorian Melodrama in the Twenty-First Century: Jane Eyre, Twilight, and the Mode of Excess in Girl Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

• Preface.How Did They Do It?- Introduction.Making It New with the Beatles.- Part I.The Beatles in/as History.- 1.'Getting Better': The Beatles and the Angry Young Men.- 2.English Gardens, Mystery Trips, and Songs Your Mother Should Know: The Beatles and British Nostalgia in 1967.- 3.Blackbird Singing: Paul McCartney's Romance of Racial Harmony and Post-Racial America.- Part II.Artistry and the Beatles.- 4.'Beatle Country': A Bluegrass 'Concept Album' from 1966.- 5.Spatial Counterpoint and the Impossible Experience of 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'.- 6.Blue Jay Way: The Imagery of Pure Consciousness in Select Beatles Songs.- 7.George Harrison and the Influence of American Popular Song.- Part III.Fandom and the Beatles.- 8.The Beatles Christmas Records ... Unwrapped: A Closer Look at the Fan Club Discs.- 9.'She Said She Said': How Women Have Transformed from Fans to Authors in Beatles History.- 10.Crying, Waiting, Hoping: The Beatles, Girl Culture, and the Melodramatic Mode.- 11.Revolution 2.0: Beatle Fan Scholarship and the Digital Age.- 12.The Beatles in the Classroom: John, Paul, George, and Ringo Go to College.- 13.The John Lennon Series and 'Factional' Narrative Biography.