An “utterly engrossing” novel of shapeshifting, sorcery, and two brothers at war by a World Fantasy Award–winning author (Publishers Weekly). Born to the shape-shifting dragon king of Ippa, twin brothers Karadur and Tenjiro share an ancestry, but not a bloodline. Only Karadur carries dragon blood, destined to one day become a dragon and rule the kingdom. In an act of jealous betrayal, Tenjiro steals the talisman that would allow Karadur to take his true dragon form and flees to a distant, icy realm. Now, years later, Tenjiro has reappeared as the evil sorcerer Ankoku. His frozen stronghold threatens to destroy Dragon Keep, and Karadur must lead his shape-shifting warriors on a journey to defeat his brother and reclaim his destiny. With Dragon’s Winter, World Fantasy Award–winning author Elizabeth A. Lynn returns with the kind of richly drawn characters and intricate worlds her fans, both old and new, will love.

Parasocial Romantic Relationships: Falling in Love with Media Figures explores how, why, and to what effect individuals develop romantic feelings toward people they “know” from the media. These imaginary, one-sided relationships, dubbed parasocial romantic relationships, are both profound and pervasive, Riva Tukachinsky Forster argues. These relationships can take many forms, including adolescents who develop celebrity crushes on popular music artist, anime enthusiasts who “marry” their favorite characters, and fanfiction authors who insert themselves into narratives as romantic interests of the protagonist. Through analysis of surveys, in-depth interviews, and historical examples, this book advances our understanding of parasocial romantic relationships on both a sociocultural and a psychological level. The data and theories analyzed offer insights into how individuals can become romantically engaged with people they do not actually know, some of whom may not even exist in reality. Ultimately, Tukachinsky Forster argues that although these relationships exist only in the mind of consumers, they serve important psychological functions across different stages of life and can lead to significant consequences for individuals’ nonmediated relationships. Scholars of media studies, communication, psychology, and sociology will find this book particularly useful.

"Teaching Autoethnography: Personal Writing in the Classroom is dedicated to the practice of immersive ethnographic and autoethnographic writing that encourages authors to participate in the communities about which they write. This book draws not only on critical qualitative inquiry methods such as interview and observation, but also on theories and sensibilities from creative writing and performance studies, which encourage self-reflection and narrative composition. Concepts from qualitative inquiry studies, which examine everyday life, are combined with approaches to the creation of character and scene to help writers develop engaging narratives that examine chosen subcultures and the author's position in relation to her research subjects. The book brings together a brief history of first-person qualitative research and writing from the past forty years, examining the evolution of nonfiction and qualitative approaches in relation to the personal essay. A selection of recent student writing in the genre as well as reflective student essays on the experience of conducting research in the classroom is presented in the context of exercises for coursework and beyond. Also explored in detail are guidelines for interviewing and identifying subjects and techniques for creating informed sketches and images that engage the reader. This book provides approaches anyone can use to explore their communities and write about them first-hand. The methods presented can be used for a single assignment in a larger course or to guide an entire semester through many levels and varieties of informed personal writing."--Open Textbook Library.

An illustrated exploration of fandom that combines academic essays with artist pages and experimental texts. Fandom as Methodology examines fandom as a set of practices for approaching and writing about art. The collection includes experimental texts, autobiography, fiction, and new academic perspectives on fandom in and as art. Key to the idea of “fandom as methodology” is a focus on the potential for fandom in art to create oppositional spaces, communities, and practices, particularly from queer perspectives, but also through transnational, feminist and artist-of-color fandoms. The book provides a range of examples of artists and writers working in this vein, as well as academic essays that explore the ways in which fandom can be theorized as a methodology for art practice and art history. Fandom as Methodology proposes that many artists and art writers already draw on affective strategies found in fandom. With the current focus in many areas of art history, art writing, and performance studies around affective engagement with artworks and imaginative potentials, fandom is a key methodology that has yet to be explored. Interwoven into the academic essays are lavishly designed artist pages in which artists offer an introduction to their use of fandom as methodology. Contributors Taylor J. Acosta, Catherine Grant, Dominic Johnson, Kate Random Love, Maud Lavin, Owen G. Parry, Alice Butler, SooJin Lee, Jenny Lin, Judy Batalion, Ika Willis. Artists featured in the artist pages Jeremy Deller, Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski, Anna Bunting-Branch, Maria Fusco, Cathy Lomax, Kamau Amu Patton, Holly Pester, Dawn Mellor, Michelle Williams Gamaker, The Women of Colour Index Reading Group, Liv Wynter, Zhiyuan Yang

Showcasing cutting-edge findings on adolescent literacy teaching and learning, this unique handbook is grounded in the realities of students' daily lives. It highlights research methods and instructional approaches that capitalize on adolescents' interests, knowledge, and new literacies. Attention is given to how race, gender, language, and other dimensions of identity--along with curriculum and teaching methods--shape youths' literacy development and engagement. The volume explores innovative ways that educators are using a variety of multimodal texts, from textbooks to graphic novels and digital productions. It reviews a range of pedagogical approaches; key topics include collaborative inquiry, argumentation, close reading, and composition.ÿ

An examination of how nonprofessional archivists, especially media fans, practice cultural preservation on the Internet and how “digital cultural memory” differs radically from print-era archiving. The task of archiving was once entrusted only to museums, libraries, and other institutions that acted as repositories of culture in material form. But with the rise of digital networked media, a multitude of self-designated archivists—fans, pirates, hackers—have become practitioners of cultural preservation on the Internet. These nonprofessional archivists have democratized cultural memory, building freely accessible online archives of whatever content they consider suitable for digital preservation. In Rogue Archives, Abigail De Kosnik examines the practice of archiving in the transition from print to digital media, looking in particular at Internet fan fiction archives. De Kosnik explains that media users today regard all of mass culture as an archive, from which they can redeploy content for their own creations. Hence, “remix culture” and fan fiction are core genres of digital cultural production. De Kosnik explores, among other things, the anticanonical archiving styles of Internet preservationists; the volunteer labor of online archiving; how fan archives serve women and queer users as cultural resources; archivists' efforts to attract racially and sexually diverse content; and how digital archives adhere to the logics of performance more than the logics of print. She also considers the similarities and differences among free culture, free software, and fan communities, and uses digital humanities tools to quantify and visualize the size, user base, and rate of growth of several online fan archives.

The creator of Urban Dictionary shares a compendium of the site’s funniest, weirdest, and truest entries. Since 1999, UrbanDictionary.com has become the undisputed authority on contemporary slang. The site’s creator, Aaron Peckham, invites its ever-expanding fanbase to submit new words and definitions. For Urban Dictionary: Fularious Street Slang Defined, Peckham has curated a choice selection of terms that will definitely earn you street cred, and help newbies avoid confusing shank with skank.