Brian Johnston is visiting assistant professor in the Department of Media, Journalism and Film at Miami University.Susan Mackey-Kallis is associate professor in the Department of Communication at Villanova University.

Reading Brian Johnston and Susan Mackey-Kallis’s Myth, Fan Culture, and the Popular Appeal of Liminality in the Music of U2: A Love Story is an uplifting experience. Building on work in fan culture studies, Johnston and Mackey-Kallis offer a compelling account of U2’s musical biography while intertwining autoethnographic insights drawn from their experiences as long-time fans of the band. The result is a powerful love story, both of fans’ love for the artists who move them and of a band whose entire musical career has illustrated the inseparable and liminal nature of three types of love (eros, agape, and amor). Together, the authors vividly illustrate how U2 and its fans travel together on a quest for “unity and social justice in the world.”

• Chapter One: IntroductionChapter Two: Love and LiminalityPart One: AgapeChapter Three: Archetypal Foundations of the “Holy” CommunityChapter Four: Call to ActionPart Two: AmorChapter Five: Into the LabyrinthChapter Six: Mythic Trajectory and the Overdeveloped ShadowPart Three: ErosChapter Seven: Into the “Heart”Chapter Eight: Integration and the Return: “Songs of Innocence + Experience” TourChapter Nine: Love, Liminality, and the Transmodern Rock StarBibliographyAbout the Authors

Brian Johnston is visiting assistant professor in the Department of Media, Journalism and Film at Miami University.Susan Mackey-Kallis is associate professor in the Department of Communication at Villanova University.

Reading Brian Johnston and Susan Mackey-Kallis’s Myth, Fan Culture, and the Popular Appeal of Liminality in the Music of U2: A Love Story is an uplifting experience. Building on work in fan culture studies, Johnston and Mackey-Kallis offer a compelling account of U2’s musical biography while intertwining autoethnographic insights drawn from their experiences as long-time fans of the band. The result is a powerful love story, both of fans’ love for the artists who move them and of a band whose entire musical career has illustrated the inseparable and liminal nature of three types of love (eros, agape, and amor). Together, the authors vividly illustrate how U2 and its fans travel together on a quest for “unity and social justice in the world.”

• Chapter One: IntroductionChapter Two: Love and LiminalityPart One: AgapeChapter Three: Archetypal Foundations of the “Holy” CommunityChapter Four: Call to ActionPart Two: AmorChapter Five: Into the LabyrinthChapter Six: Mythic Trajectory and the Overdeveloped ShadowPart Three: ErosChapter Seven: Into the “Heart”Chapter Eight: Integration and the Return: “Songs of Innocence + Experience” TourChapter Nine: Love, Liminality, and the Transmodern Rock StarBibliographyAbout the Authors

Brian Johnston is visiting assistant professor in the Department of Media, Journalism and Film at Miami University.Susan Mackey-Kallis is associate professor in the Department of Communication at Villanova University.

Reading Brian Johnston and Susan Mackey-Kallis’s Myth, Fan Culture, and the Popular Appeal of Liminality in the Music of U2: A Love Story is an uplifting experience. Building on work in fan culture studies, Johnston and Mackey-Kallis offer a compelling account of U2’s musical biography while intertwining autoethnographic insights drawn from their experiences as long-time fans of the band. The result is a powerful love story, both of fans’ love for the artists who move them and of a band whose entire musical career has illustrated the inseparable and liminal nature of three types of love (eros, agape, and amor). Together, the authors vividly illustrate how U2 and its fans travel together on a quest for “unity and social justice in the world.”

• Chapter One: IntroductionChapter Two: Love and LiminalityPart One: AgapeChapter Three: Archetypal Foundations of the “Holy” CommunityChapter Four: Call to ActionPart Two: AmorChapter Five: Into the LabyrinthChapter Six: Mythic Trajectory and the Overdeveloped ShadowPart Three: ErosChapter Seven: Into the “Heart”Chapter Eight: Integration and the Return: “Songs of Innocence + Experience” TourChapter Nine: Love, Liminality, and the Transmodern Rock StarBibliographyAbout the Authors