Mythologies of Martial Arts

Paul Bowman is Director of Postgraduate Research Studies in the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University. He is the founding editor of JOMEC Journal and Martial Arts Studies; founder of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Film and Visual Culture Research; Director of the Race, Representation and Cultural Politics Research Group and co-director of the Reconstructing Multiculturalism Research Network. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Cardiff University Press.He has edited multiple issues of the journal Parallax, plus issues of the journals Postcolonial Studies, Social Semiotics and Educational Philosophy and Theory, as well as regular issues of JOMEC Journal. In addition, he has edited several books: Interrogating Cultural Studies (2003), The Truth of Žižek (2006), The Rey Chow Reader (2010), Reading Rancière (2011) and Rancière and Film (2013). He has also authored many academic monographs: Post-Marxism versus Cultural Studies (2007), Deconstructing Popular Culture (2008), Theorizing Bruce Lee (2010), Culture and the Media (2012), Beyond Bruce Lee (2013) and Reading Rey Chow (2013). His work has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Chinese and Farsi. He is on the editorial board of Culture Machine, Global Discourse, East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, The Poster, and Ctrl-Z: New/Media/Philosophy.

Bowman provides a fascinating insight for those interested in cultural studies to begin thinking about how martial arts in general have been situated in American society.... Bowman masterfully enters this discussion, raising much needed debate, and doing it in a way that demands readers be serious about the field of cultural studies. Dividing the book into separate chapters, all of which deal with a specific set of questions, documents, and arguments, this text would fit well into any advanced graduate reading seminar, either as a complete text or with select chapters serving as standalone essays. Likewise, this work is bound to raise the interest of cultural studies scholars as treats its subject with intelligence, and focus. One can hardly ask for anything more when reading a book.

• Acknowledgements/ Introduction/ 1. Wrestling Myth/ 2. The Status of Martial Arts in the West: From the Kung Fu Craze to Master Ken/ 3. Cross-Cultural Desire in Western Eastern Martial Arts/ 4. The Circulation of Qi in Media and Culture/ 5. Myths of Martial Arts History, Authority and Authenticity/ 6. On Kicking, Kung Fu, and Knowing Your Lineage/ 7. Enter the Ethnicity/ 8. Wong Jack Man versus Bruce Lee Mythology/ 9. The Gender of Martial Arts Studies/ 10. Everybody was Action Film Fighting/ 11. The Weird and the Wonderful in Martial Arts Today/ 12. Martial Arts Myth Today/ Bibliography/ Index