Meaghan Morris - Böcker

The Year's Work in Showgirls Studies is a fan culture volume that deconstructs how and why Showgirls, a 1995 drama with a female lead bent on becoming a famous performer in Las Vegas, became a much-contested cult film despite being a critical failure when it released. The collection orchestrates a conversation between scholarly essay work and archival documentation offering a magnificent representation of the array of responses generated by the film, its makers, its promoters, and its audience. A multifaceted approach to the film, its popularity, and its social relevance results in a new text for understanding normative social hierarchies of sexuality, race, and gender. The Year's Work in Showgirls Studies engages with the figurative and actual place of sex work and feminized affective labor in our society.

The Year's Work in Showgirls Studies is a fan culture volume that deconstructs how and why Showgirls, a 1995 drama with a female lead bent on becoming a famous performer in Las Vegas, became a much-contested cult film despite being a critical failure when it released. The collection orchestrates a conversation between scholarly essay work and archival documentation offering a magnificent representation of the array of responses generated by the film, its makers, its promoters, and its audience. A multifaceted approach to the film, its popularity, and its social relevance results in a new text for understanding normative social hierarchies of sexuality, race, and gender. The Year's Work in Showgirls Studies engages with the figurative and actual place of sex work and feminized affective labor in our society.

This book asks what ‘transnationalism’ might mean for Cultural Studies as an intellectual project shaped in vastly differing circumstances across the world. With contributions from scholars with experience of cultural life and the work of education in various regions, countries and locales - from francophone Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East to Hawaii, Jamaica, South Korea and Japan - Cultural Studies of Transnationalism ranges across literary, film, dance, theatrical and translation studies to explore the socially material and institutional factors that not only shape transnational developments in culture broadly understood, but also frame the academic and professional spaces in which we reflect on these.This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Cultural Studies.

This book asks what ‘transnationalism’ might mean for Cultural Studies as an intellectual project shaped in vastly differing circumstances across the world. With contributions from scholars with experience of cultural life and the work of education in various regions, countries and locales - from francophone Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East to Hawaii, Jamaica, South Korea and Japan - Cultural Studies of Transnationalism ranges across literary, film, dance, theatrical and translation studies to explore the socially material and institutional factors that not only shape transnational developments in culture broadly understood, but also frame the academic and professional spaces in which we reflect on these.This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Cultural Studies.

Over 25 years ago, Raymond Williams’ Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society set the standard for how we understand and use the language of culture and society. Now, three luminaries in the field of cultural studies have assembled a volume that builds on and updates Williams’ classic, reflecting the transformation in culture and society since its publication. New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society is a state-of-the-art reference for students, teachers and culture vultures everywhere. Assembles a stellar team of internationally renowned and interdisciplinary social thinkers and theorists Showcases 142 signed entries – from art, commodity, and fundamentalism to youth, utopia, the virtual, and the West – that capture the practices, institutions, and debates of contemporary society Builds on and updates Raymond Williams’s classic Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, by reflecting the transformation in culture and society over the last 25 years Includes a bibliographic resource to guide research and cross-referencing The book is supported by a website: www.blackwellpublishing.com/newkeywords.

"Meticulously attentive to the complex nuances and intricacies of what is too easily glossed as 'cross-cultural communication', these essays offer us a unique, writerly perspective on what it takes, socially and textually, to reconcile the requirements of an effective shared discourse – cultural studies – with the intrinsic heterogeneity of our divergent glocal realities... an awesomely satisfying and enlightening read."- Ien Ang, University of Western Sydney 

How is identity produced in global 'textual environments'? What forms of narrative generate solidarity in a world in which globalization and trans-nationality can often appear to be a fait accompli?

This brilliant, coruscating book, written by one of the most formidable and original thinkers in cultural studies, examines questions of nationality, identity, the use of anecdote to build solidarity and the role of institutions in shaping culture. Ranging across many fields, including film and media, gender, nationality, globalization and popular culture, it provides a mind-clearing exercise in recognizing what culture is, and how it works, today. Illustrated with a fund of relevant and insightful examples, it addresses the central questions in cultural studies today: identity, post-identity, the uses of narrative and textual analysis, the industrial organization of solidarity and the opportunities and dilemmas of globalization.

Penetrating, arresting and inimitable, the book is a major contribution to the field of cultural studies. It is of interest to students of cultural studies, media, film and cultural sociology.

This collection offers a range of cultural studies perspectives on the ways gender and modernity intersect in media produced in the Asia-Pacific region. It spans different ideas about modernity in the region, different approaches to cultural analysis, and different media forms: from Taiwanese lifestyle television to avant-garde Indian cinema, from the emergence of a Chinese youth culture in online social networks to the alienation of country girls as imagined by Australian soap opera, and from the fantastic politics of migrating bodies in Korean cinema to the masculine mimicry of fighting women in South-East Asian action movies. Together, these essays explore the ways that media both records and helps produce images and experiences of modernity and the integral role gender plays in those processes.This book was originally published as a special issue of Cultural Studies.

This collection offers a range of cultural studies perspectives on the ways gender and modernity intersect in media produced in the Asia-Pacific region. It spans different ideas about modernity in the region, different approaches to cultural analysis, and different media forms: from Taiwanese lifestyle television to avant-garde Indian cinema, from the emergence of a Chinese youth culture in online social networks to the alienation of country girls as imagined by Australian soap opera, and from the fantastic politics of migrating bodies in Korean cinema to the masculine mimicry of fighting women in South-East Asian action movies. Together, these essays explore the ways that media both records and helps produce images and experiences of modernity and the integral role gender plays in those processes.This book was originally published as a special issue of Cultural Studies.

Since the 1960s, Hong Kong cinema has helped to shape one of the world’s most popular cultural genres: action cinema. Hong Kong action films have proved popular over the decades with audiences worldwide, and they have seized the imaginations of filmmakers working in many different cultural traditions and styles. How do we account for this appeal, which changes as it crosses national borders?Hong Kong Connections brings leading film scholars together to explore the circulation of Hong Kong cinema in Japan, Korea, India, Australia, France, and the United States, as well as its links with Taiwan, Singapore, and the Chinese mainland. In the process, this collection examines diverse cultural contexts for action cinema’s popularity and the problems involved in the transnational study of globally popular forms, suggesting that in order to grasp the history of Hong Kong action cinema’s influence we need to bring out the differences as well as the links that constitute popularity.Contributors. Nicole Brenez, Stephen Chan Ching-kiu, Dai Jinhua, David Desser, Laleen Jayamanne, Kim Soyoung, Siu Leung Li, Adrian Martin, S. V. Srinivas, Stephen Teo, Valentina Vitali, Paul Willemen, Rob Wilson, Wong Kin-yuen, Kinnia Yau Shuk-ting, Yung Sai-shing

This work explores in detail how innovative academic activism can transform our everyday workplaces in contexts of considerable adversity. Personal essays by prominent scholars provide critical reflections on their institution-building triumphs and setbacks across a range of cultural institutions. Often adopting narrative approaches, the contributors examine how effective programs and activities are built in varying local and national contexts within a common global regime of university management policy. Here they share experiences based on developing new undergraduate degrees, setting up research centers and postgraduate schools, editing field-shaping book series and journals, establishing international artist-in-residence programs, and founding social activist networks. This book also investigates the impact of managerialism, marketization, and globalization on university cultures, asking what critical cultural scholarship can do in such increasingly adversarial conditions. Experiments in Asian universities are emphasized as exemplary of what can or could be achieved in other contexts of globalized university policy. Contributors. Tony Bennett, Stephen Ching-Kiu Chan, Kuan-Hsing Chen, Douglas Crimp, Dai Jinhua, John Nguyet Erni, Mette Hjort, Josephine Ho, Koichi Iwabuchi, Meaghan Morris, Tejaswini Niranjana, Wang Xiaoming, Audrey Yue

Since the 1960s, Hong Kong cinema has helped to shape one of the world’s most popular cultural genres: action cinema. Hong Kong action films have proved popular over the decades with audiences worldwide, and they have seized the imaginations of filmmakers working in many different cultural traditions and styles. How do we account for this appeal, which changes as it crosses national borders?Hong Kong Connections brings leading film scholars together to explore the circulation of Hong Kong cinema in Japan, Korea, India, Australia, France, and the United States, as well as its links with Taiwan, Singapore, and the Chinese mainland. In the process, this collection examines diverse cultural contexts for action cinema’s popularity and the problems involved in the transnational study of globally popular forms, suggesting that in order to grasp the history of Hong Kong action cinema’s influence we need to bring out the differences as well as the links that constitute popularity.Contributors. Nicole Brenez, Stephen Chan Ching-kiu, Dai Jinhua, David Desser, Laleen Jayamanne, Kim Soyoung, Siu Leung Li, Adrian Martin, S. V. Srinivas, Stephen Teo, Valentina Vitali, Paul Willemen, Rob Wilson, Wong Kin-yuen, Kinnia Yau Shuk-ting, Yung Sai-shing

The second volume of the Traces series, "Race" Panic and the Memory of Migration, explores complex relations between violence, historical memory, and the production of "ethnicity" and "race." Some essays analyze the panicked "othering" that has led to violence against Chinese Indonesians, and to the little-known massacres of Hui Muslims in nineteenth century China and of Cheju Islanders in Korea in 1948. Others examine the fraught discourses surrounding colonialism, immigration, citizenship, and nation-building in Australia, Taiwan, Japan, the United States, and Ireland. What new modes of inscribing experience might counter prejudice against migrant subjectivities? How can one articulate links between diverse subaltern struggles around the global movement of capital? Can shared memories of domination provide the basis for a cosmopolitanism more attentive to local identities?

The second volume of the Traces series, "Race" Panic and the Memory of Migration, explores complex relations between violence, historical memory, and the production of "ethnicity" and "race." Some essays analyze the panicked "othering" that has led to violence against Chinese Indonesians, and to the little-known massacres of Hui Muslims in nineteenth century China and of Cheju Islanders in Korea in 1948. Others examine the fraught discourses surrounding colonialism, immigration, citizenship, and nation-building in Australia, Taiwan, Japan, the United States, and Ireland. What new modes of inscribing experience might counter prejudice against migrant subjectivities? How can one articulate links between diverse subaltern struggles around the global movement of capital? Can shared memories of domination provide the basis for a cosmopolitanism more attentive to local identities?