Popular Culture

Through American history, often in times of crisis, there have been periodic outbreaks of obsession with the paranormal. Between 2004 and 2019, ove...

Ed Brubaker (b. 1966) has emerged as one of the most popular, significant figures in art comics since the 1990s. Most famous as the man who killed ...

Animated by a singularly subversive spirit, the fiendishly intelligent works of Stuart Gordon (19472020) are distinguished by their arrant boldness...

From the late 1920s through the thirties, Greta Garbo (19051990) was the biggest star in Hollywood. She stopped making films in 1941, at only thirt...

Isiah Lavender III's Dis-Orienting Planets amplifies critical issues surrounding the racial and ethnic dimensions of science fiction. This edited v...

Media narratives in popular culture often assign interchangeable characteristics to childhood and old age, presuming a resemblance between children...

How did the average American learn about art in the mid-nineteenth century? With public art museums still in their infancy, and few cities and town...

Creatively spent and politically irrelevant, the American horror film is a mere ghost of its former self-or so goes the old saw from fans and schol...

In France, Belgium, and other Francophone countries, comic strips---called bande dessinee or BD in French---have long been considered a major art f...

Its been barely twenty years since Dave Eggers (b. 1970) burst onto the American literary scene with the publication of his memoir, A Heartbreaking...

Autobiography has seen enormous expansions and challenges over the past decades. One of these expansions has been in comics, and it is an expansion...

Every living American adult likely prized one childhood toy that featured the happy image of an animated cartoon or comic strip character. There is...

The undead are very much alive in contemporary entertainment and lore. Indeed, vampires and zombies have garnered attention in print media, cinema,...

Contributions by Lauren R. Carmacci, Keridiana Chez, Kate Glassman, John Granger, Marie Schilling Grogan, Beatrice Groves, Tolonda Henderson, Nusai...

In a 2019 interview with the webzine DC in the 80s, Jeff Lemire (b. 1976) discusses the comics he read as a child growing up in Essex County, Ontar...

The Poetics of American Song Lyrics is the first collection of academic essays that regards songs as literature and that identifies intersections b...

Samuel L. Clemens lost the 1882 lawsuit declaring his exclusive right to use Mark Twain as a commercial trademark, but he succeeded in the marketpl...

From their beginnings, campuses emerged as hotbeds of traditions and folklore. American college students inhabit a culture with its own slang, stor...

From their beginnings, campuses emerged as hotbeds of traditions and folklore. American college students inhabit a culture with its own slang, stor...

The early 1980s saw a revolution in mainstream comics--in subject matter, artistic integrity, and creators' rights--as new methods of publishing an...

In the 1970s, Northern Soul held a pivotal position in British youth culture. Originating in the English North and Midlands in the late-1960s, by t...

Ranging from the playful, to the fact-filled, and to the thoughtful, this collection tracks the fortunes of Walt Disney's flagship character. From ...

This vibrant 3-volume set explores Banksy's iconic works through the lens of some of his most powerful symbols-rats, monkeys, and children. Whethe...

Over thirty years after his initial ascent to super stardom, Todd McFarlane (b. 1961) remains one of the most popular and contentious comic artists...