This book surveys the labyrinthine relationship between Stephen King and American History. By depicting American History as a doomed cycle of greed and violence, King poses a number of important questions: who gets to make history, what gets left out, how one understands one''s role within it, and how one might avoid repeating mistakes of the past. This volume examines King''s relationship to American History through the illumination of metanarratives, adaptations, "queer" and alternative historical lenses, which confront the destructive patterns of our past as well as our capacity to imagine a different future. Stephen King and American History will present readers with an opportunity to place popular culture in conversation with the pressing issues of our day. If we hope to imagine a different path forward, we will need to come to terms with this enclosure—a task for which King''s corpus is uniquely well-suited.

This book surveys the labyrinthine relationship between Stephen King and American History. By depicting American History as a doomed cycle of greed and violence, King poses a number of important questions: who gets to make history, what gets left out, how one understands one''s role within it, and how one might avoid repeating mistakes of the past. This volume examines King''s relationship to American History through the illumination of metanarratives, adaptations, "queer" and alternative historical lenses, which confront the destructive patterns of our past as well as our capacity to imagine a different future. Stephen King and American History will present readers with an opportunity to place popular culture in conversation with the pressing issues of our day. If we hope to imagine a different path forward, we will need to come to terms with this enclosure—a task for which King''s corpus is uniquely well-suited.

This book features an in-depth analysis of the world’s most popular movie, The Shawshank Redemption, delving into issues such as: the significance of race in the film, its cinematic debt to earlier genres, the gothic influences at work in the movie, and the representation of Andy’s poster art as cross-gendered signifiers. In addition to exploring the film and novella from which it was adapted, this book also traces the history of the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio, which served as the film’s central location, and its relationship to the movie’s fictional Shawshank Prison. The last chapter examines why this film has remained both a popular and critical success, inspiring diverse fan bases on the Internet and the evolution of the Shawshank Trail, fourteen of the film’s actual site locations that have become a major tourist attraction in central Ohio.

Although there have been over 700 illustrators of Poe’s work over the past two centuries, this book chooses to examine only the best of them. Beginning with the French in the nineteenth century and tracing the great illustrators of Poe to the present, this book not only provides close analyses of individual visualizations but also seeks to supply an art history context to understanding their emergence.  The majority of the artists featured remain unknown, even to Poe scholars, although their artwork represents iterations inspired by the most famous of Poe’s poems and stories.  In some cases, the illustrations helped increase the visibility of particular Poe works and to make them part of the international Poe canon.  A few of the illustrators featured in this book (e.g., Manet, Doré, Redon, Beardsley) are recognized among the most famous artists in the world.  Others, such as Martini and Blumenschein, while remaining minor figures in art history, nevertheless produced immortal work based on Poe’s fiction and poetry.  While still other visual artists represented here (Rackham, Dulac, Clarke) achieved artistic fame as book illustrators based on homages to other writers and fairy tales in combination with their Poe studies; their work on Poe, however, helped to solidify their larger reputations as professional illustrators.  The last chapter extends traditional visualizations influenced by Poe to include his impact on twentieth- and twenty-first century filmmakers and cartoonists.  They, too, found in Poe’s writing either a source for direct re-creation or an inspiration for their own atmospheric excursions into the bizarre, the exotic, and the psychologically complex.  

This book surveys the labyrinthine relationship between Stephen King and American History. By depicting American History as a doomed cycle of greed and violence, King poses a number of important questions: who gets to make history, what gets left out, how one understands one''s role within it, and how one might avoid repeating mistakes of the past. This volume examines King''s relationship to American History through the illumination of metanarratives, adaptations, "queer" and alternative historical lenses, which confront the destructive patterns of our past as well as our capacity to imagine a different future. Stephen King and American History will present readers with an opportunity to place popular culture in conversation with the pressing issues of our day. If we hope to imagine a different path forward, we will need to come to terms with this enclosure—a task for which King''s corpus is uniquely well-suited.

This book surveys the labyrinthine relationship between Stephen King and American History. By depicting American History as a doomed cycle of greed and violence, King poses a number of important questions: who gets to make history, what gets left out, how one understands one''s role within it, and how one might avoid repeating mistakes of the past. This volume examines King''s relationship to American History through the illumination of metanarratives, adaptations, "queer" and alternative historical lenses, which confront the destructive patterns of our past as well as our capacity to imagine a different future. Stephen King and American History will present readers with an opportunity to place popular culture in conversation with the pressing issues of our day. If we hope to imagine a different path forward, we will need to come to terms with this enclosure—a task for which King''s corpus is uniquely well-suited.

This book features an in-depth analysis of the world’s most popular movie, The Shawshank Redemption, delving into issues such as: the significance of race in the film, its cinematic debt to earlier genres, the gothic influences at work in the movie, and the representation of Andy’s poster art as cross-gendered signifiers. In addition to exploring the film and novella from which it was adapted, this book also traces the history of the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio, which served as the film’s central location, and its relationship to the movie’s fictional Shawshank Prison. The last chapter examines why this film has remained both a popular and critical success, inspiring diverse fan bases on the Internet and the evolution of the Shawshank Trail, fourteen of the film’s actual site locations that have become a major tourist attraction in central Ohio.

Although there have been over 700 illustrators of Poe’s work over the past two centuries, this book chooses to examine only the best of them. Beginning with the French in the nineteenth century and tracing the great illustrators of Poe to the present, this book not only provides close analyses of individual visualizations but also seeks to supply an art history context to understanding their emergence.  The majority of the artists featured remain unknown, even to Poe scholars, although their artwork represents iterations inspired by the most famous of Poe’s poems and stories.  In some cases, the illustrations helped increase the visibility of particular Poe works and to make them part of the international Poe canon.  A few of the illustrators featured in this book (e.g., Manet, Doré, Redon, Beardsley) are recognized among the most famous artists in the world.  Others, such as Martini and Blumenschein, while remaining minor figures in art history, nevertheless produced immortal work based on Poe’s fiction and poetry.  While still other visual artists represented here (Rackham, Dulac, Clarke) achieved artistic fame as book illustrators based on homages to other writers and fairy tales in combination with their Poe studies; their work on Poe, however, helped to solidify their larger reputations as professional illustrators.  The last chapter extends traditional visualizations influenced by Poe to include his impact on twentieth- and twenty-first century filmmakers and cartoonists.  They, too, found in Poe’s writing either a source for direct re-creation or an inspiration for their own atmospheric excursions into the bizarre, the exotic, and the psychologically complex.