Each age produces its own Henry(s). This innovative study in popular culture examines how novels, films, TV-series and historiography shape new versions of Henry VIII for the twenty-first century. From The Other Boleyn Girl to The Tudors, 2009’s quint-centenary celebrations of Henry’s coronation and Wolf Hall, (hi)stories are produced, distributed and used in very different ways. In each case, the producers’ intentions, the narrative and the targeted audiences all contribute to the discourses on Henry VIII. However, there no longer exists a universally accepted popularization of Tudor history, so certain representations can lead to intense debates, for instance in case of the TV-show The Tudors. Detailed studies of how audiences appropriate the narratives complement a thorough analysis of each text. In this manner, the monograph examines how different sense-resources are shaped into histories in various new subgenres and how the audiences, too, actively compare these histories. All of this takes place within an increasingly diverse historical culture. Simple notions of history as a top-down process are refuted as the role of the consumers and the use which they make of the individual histories is highlighted.

What constitutes the core values, tenets, cultural, historic, and ideological parameters of secularism in international contexts? In twelve chapters, this edited work examines current tensions in liberal secular states where myriad rights and freedoms compete regarding education, healthcare, end-of-life choices, clothing, sexual orientation, reproduction, and minority interests.

Popular culture surrounds us: It is the products we consume, the movies we watch, the music we listen to, and the books we read. It is on our televisions, our phones, and our computers. Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century engages with these texts and offers a diverse selection of contemporary scholarship from a wide variety of perspectives. These essays, adapted from presentations at the first annual Ray Browne Conference on Popular Culture held at Bowling Green State University in 2012, participate in an ongoing dialogue about popular culture’s importance in both the academy and our everyday lives. This collection honors the diversity, depth, and breadth of popular culture studies by examining contemporary television, film, video games, internet fandom, cultures and subcultures, and gender, sexuality, and identity politics. Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century reflects the necessity of exploring our common experiences and the many cultural modes that shape our everyday lives.

This book examines melodramatic impulses in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, as well as the series' film adaptations and fan-authored texts. Attention to conventions such as crying, victimization, and happy endings in the context of the Twilight-Jane Eyre relationship reveals melodrama as an empowering mode of communication for girls. Although melodrama has saturated popular culture since the nineteenth century, its expression in texts for, about, and by girls has been remarkably under theorized. By defining melodrama, however, through its Victorian lineages, Katie Kapurch recognizes melodrama's aesthetic form and rhetorical function in contemporary girl culture while also demonstrating its legacy since the nineteenth century. Informed by feminist theories of literature and film, Kapurch shows how melodrama is worthy of serious consideration since the mode critiques limiting social constructions of postfeminist girlhood and, at the same time, enhances intimacy between girls—both characters and readers.

2023 marks 400 years since the death of English renaissance composer, William Byrd. Byrd's rich musical oeuvre and storied career has long captured the attention of audiences and scholars alike. This all-new collected edition marks his anniversary with thirteen brand-new essays from leading scholars on Byrd's musical life and legacy.

The sixteenth century was an age of politically powerful women. Queens, acting in their own right, and female regents, acting on behalf of their male relatives, governed much of Western Europe. Yet even as women ruled - and ruled effectively - their right to do so was hotly contested. Men s voices have long dominated this debate, but the recovery of texts by women now allows their voices, long silenced, to be heard once again. Debating Women, Politics, and Power in Early Modern Europe is a study of texts and textual production in the construction of gender, society, and politics in the early modern period. Jansen explores the "gynecocracy" debate and the larger humanist response to the challenge posed by female sovereignty.

The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Adaptation explores the dynamics of adapted Shakespeare across a range of literary genres and new media forms. This comprehensive reference and research resource maps the field of Shakespeare adaptation studies, identifying theories of adaptation, their application in practice and the methodologies that underpin them. It investigates current research and points towards future lines of enquiry for students, researchers and creative practitioners of Shakespeare adaptation. The opening section on research methods and problems considers definitions and theories of Shakespeare adaptation and emphasises how Shakespeare is both adaptor and adapted.A central section develops these theoretical concerns through a series of case studies that move across a range of genres, media forms and cultures to ask not only how Shakespeare is variously transfigured, hybridised and valorised through adaptational play, but also how adaptations produce interpretive communities, and within these potentially new literacies, modes of engagement and sensory pleasures. The volume's third section provides the reader with uniquely detailed insights into creative adaptation, with writers and practice-based researchers reflecting on their close collaborations with Shakespeare's works as an aesthetic, ethical and political encounter. The Handbook further establishes the conceptual parameters of the field through detailed, practical resources that will aid the specialist and non-specialist reader alike, including a guide to research resources and an annotated bibliography.