Contemporary Media Culture and the Remnants of a Colonial Past examines contemporary representations of colonialism, by developing a historically and culturally specific theory of neocolonialism in U.S. media culture. Noting how colonialism never officially ended in the United States, Kent A. Ono draws together race, gender, sexuality, and nation to examine neocolonialism in popular media narratives. The book asks, «What are the lingering traces within contemporary culture that provide evidence not only of what colonialism was but also of what it continues to be today?» Offering five case studies on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the sale of the Seattle Mariners, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Pocahontas, and Star Trek: The Next Generation--and providing current media examples in the introduction and conclusion, the book documents the persistence of colonialism in media culture. White vigilantism, prototypical colonial rescue plots, and cloaked and not-so-hidden anxieties about racial and national miscegenation all contribute towards a continuation of colonialism and a neocolonial mind-set. The book's critical examination from a historical and cultural perspective makes it possible to alter colonialism for future generations.

Mixed Media in Contemporary American Literature: Voices Gone Viral investigates the formation and formulation of the contemporary novel through a historical analysis of voice studies and media studies. After situating research through voices of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, this book examines the expressions of a multi-media vocality, examining the interactions among cultural polemics, aesthetic forms, and changing media in the twenty-first century. The novel studies shown here trace the ways in which the viral aesthetics of the contemporary novel move language out of context, recontextualizing human testimony by galvanizing mixed media forms that shape contemporary literature in our age of networks. Through readings of American authors such as Claudia Rankine, David Foster Wallace, Jennifer Egan, Junot Díaz, Michael Chabon, Joseph O’Neill, Michael Cunningham, and Colum McCann, the book considers how voice acts as a site where identities combine, conform, and are questioned relationally. By listening to and tracing the spoken and unspoken voices of the novel, the author identifies a politics of listening and speaking in our mediated, informational society.

Introduction to Contemporary Print Culture examines the role of the book in the modern world. It considers the book’s deeply intertwined relationships with other media through ownership structures, copyright and adaptation, the constantly shifting roles of authors, publishers and readers in the digital ecosystem and the merging of print and digital technologies in contemporary understandings of the book object. Divided into three parts, the book first introduces students to various theories and methods for understanding print culture, demonstrating how the study of the book has grown out of longstanding academic disciplines. The second part surveys key sectors of the contemporary book world – from independent and alternative publishers to editors, booksellers, readers and libraries – focusing on topical debates. In the final part, digital technologies take centre stage as eBook regimes and mass-digitisation projects are examined for what they reveal about information power and access in the twenty-first century. This book provides a fascinating and informative introduction for students of all levels in publishing studies, book history, literature and English, media, communication and cultural studies, cultural sociology, librarianship and archival studies and digital humanities.

This book discusses the changes in contemporary culture at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries in Poland on the example of relationships between literature and the media. The author adopts an interdisciplinary approach combining literary and media studies with the perspectives of social communication, anthropology and sociology of culture.

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

How does contemporary literature respond to the digitalized media culture in which it takes part? And how do we study literature in order to shed light on these responses? Under the subsections Technology, Subjectivity, and Aesthetics, Literature in Contemporary Media Culture sets out to answer these questions. The book shows how literature over the last decade has charted the impact of new technologies on human conduct. It explores how changes in literary production, distribution, and consumption can be correlated to changes in social practices more generally. And it examines how (and if) contemporary media culture affects our understanding of literary aesthetics. Addressing Scandinavian and Anglo-American poetry and fiction produced around the beginning of the present century, Literature in Contemporary Media Culture highlights both well-known and unfamiliar literary texts. It offers cross-disciplinary methodological tools and reading strategies for studying literary phenomena such as intermedial aesthetics, the autobiographical novel, conceptual literature, and digital poetry, all of which are prevalent across national borders at the outset of the twenty-first century. This book will be of interest to students and established scholars in the fields of literature, film and media studies, and visual studies, as well as to members of the general reading public.

Contemporary Publishing and the Culture of Books is a comprehensive resource that builds bridges between the traditional focus and methodologies of literary studies and the actualities of modern and contemporary literature, including the realities of professional writing, the conventions and practicalities of the publishing world, and its connections between literary publishing and other media. Focusing on the relationship between modern literature and the publishing industry, the volume enables students and academics to extend the text-based framework of modules on contemporary writing into detailed expositions of the culture and industry which bring these texts into existence; it brings economic considerations into line alongside creative issues, and examines how employing marketing strategies are utilized to promote and sell books. Sections cover: The standard university-course specifications of contemporary writing, offering an extensive picture of the social, economic, and cultural contexts of these literary genres The impact and status of non-literary writing, and how this compares with certain literary genres as an index to contemporary culture and a reflection of the state of the publishing industry The practicalities and conventions of the publishing industry Contextual aspects of literary culture and the book industry, visiting the broader spheres of publishing, promotion, bookselling, and literary culture Carefully linked chapters allow readers to tie key elements of the publishing industry to the particular demands and features of contemporary literary genres and writing, offering a detailed guide to the ways in which the three core areas of culture, economics, and pragmatics intersect in the world of publishing. Further to being a valuable resource for those studying English or Creative Writing, the volume is a key text for degrees in which Publishing is a component, and is relevant to those aspects of Media Studies that look at interactions between the media and literature/publishing.