Anthem Studies in Popular Culture – serie

‘South Asian Media Cultures’ examines a wide range of media cultures and practices from across South Asia, using a common set of historical, political and theoretical engagements.  In the context of such pressing issues as peace, conflict, democracy, politics, religion, class, ethnicity and gender, these essays explore the ways different groups of South Asians produce, understand and critique the media available to them.

Edward FitzGerald's ‘Rubáiyát’, loosely based on verses attributed to the eleventh-century Persian writer, Omar Khayyám, has become one of the most widely known poems in the world, republished virtually every year from 1879 to the present day, and translated into over eighty different languages. And yet it has been largely ignored or at best patronized by the academic establishment. This volume sets out to explore the reasons for both the popularity and the neglect.

The end of the Cold War brought new opportunities to explore the long tradition and myriad uses of humour through over two centuries of Russian literature and culture. 'Reflective Laughter' is the first book devoted to an overview of this subject. Bringing together contributions from a number of distinguished scholars from Russia, Europe and North America, this volume ranges from the classics of nineteenth-century literature through to the intellectual and popular comedic culture, both state-sponsored and official, of the twentieth-century, taking in journalism, propaganda, scholarly discourse, jokes, films and television. In doing so, it explores how our understanding remains distorted by the polarization of the East and West during the Cold War.

'Lesser Breeds' focuses on racism as manifested in the popular culture of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain, exemplified by attitudes to the Chinese, Arabs, Blacks and Jews. This compelling book investigates the manifold expressions of prejudice in the popular arts of the period.

Commercial cinema has always been one of the biggest indigenous industries in India, and remains so in the post-globalization era, when Indian economy has entered a new phase of global participation, liberalization and expansion. Issues of community, gender, society, social and economic justice, bourgeois-liberal individualism, secular nationhood and ethnic identity are nowhere more explored in the Indian cultural mainstream than in commercial cinema. As Indian economy and policy have gone through a sea-change after the end of the Cold War and the commencement of the Global Capital, the largest cultural industry has followed suit. This book is a significant addition to the study of post-Global Indian culture. The articles represent a variety of theoretical and pedagogical approaches, and the collection will be appreciated by beginners and scholars alike.