Pops in Pop Culture

Elizabeth Podnieks is Associate Professor of English and the Graduate Program in Communication and Culture at Ryerson University, Canada. She is the author of Daily Modernism: The Literary Diaries of Virginia Woolf, Antonia White, Elizabeth Smart, and Anaïs Nin (2000); the co-editor of Textual Mothers/Maternal Texts: Motherhood in Contemporary Women’s Literatures (2009); and the editor of Mediating Moms: Mothers in Popular Culture (2012), awarded the Outstanding Scholarship (2012-2013) Prize by the Canadian Women’s and Gender Studies et Recherches Féministes. She is the Area Chair (2012-ongoing) for the Motherhood/Fatherhood Area of thePopular Culture Association/American Culture Association.

"The essays that comprise Pops in Pop Culture work together to make a valuable intervention in studies of fatherhood across a broad spectrum of forms of popular media and contemporary culture, and in a range of different national and cultural contexts. Taking a cross-media approach, the essays differently interrogate and contextualize symptomatic examples of cultures of fatherhood from popular film, serial television, situation comedy, advertising, videogames, literary fiction, and more. It is a timely and welcome addition to scholarship on mediated masculinities." - Hannah Hamad, Senior Lecturer, Media Studies, University of East Anglia, UK

• Introduction: Pops in Pop Context; Elizabeth PodnieksPART I: SELF-DEFINING DADS: AUTOBIOGRAPHY, PATERNAL LESSONS, AND NARRATIVE PERFORMANCE1. Pappahandbooks: Guidebooks for Dads in Twenty-First Century Sweden; Helena Wahlström Henriksson 2. Fatherhood, Feminism, and Failure in Louis C.K.'s Comedy; Peter C. Kunze3. "Daddy Time all the time": Representations of Involved Fatherhood in Contemporary Dadoirs; Elizabeth Podnieks4. Daddyblogs Know Best: Histories of Fatherhood in the Cyber Age; May FriedmanPART II: "REAL" MEN: BRAWN, POWER, AND PROTECTION 5. Ads and Dads: TV Commercials and Contemporary Attitudes Toward Fatherhood; Kristi Rowan Humphreys6. Hard Bodies, Soft Hearts: Mixed-Race Men as Muscular Daddies in the Films of Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson; Andrea Schofield7. Contemporary Crime Fighting Dads: Negotiating Masculinity and Fathering in 24 and Castle; Christy Ebert Vrtis 8. Tale of Two Fathers: Authenticating Fatherhood in Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain: The Origami Killer and Naughty Dog's The Last of Us; Melvin G. Hill PART III: ECONOMICS AND EMOTIONS: PROVIDERS, PALS, AND NURTURERS9. Breaking Dad: Re-Imagining Post-War Models of American Fatherhood in Breaking Bad; Heath A. Diehl 10. Masculinity, Subjectivities, and Caregiving in the British Press: The Case of the Stay-At-Home Father; Abigail Locke11. A Sentimental Fathering Model: Alexander McCall Smith's Vision for Nurturing Paternity in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series; Nicole L. Willey12. Modern Fathers in Modern Family: The Impact of Generational Differences on Fatherhood Styles; Kathryn Pallister