Based on the blog 'Rich Kids of Instagram' this is a hilarious novel about the intersecting lives of the world's most extravagant teenagers

This volume proposes the ‘poetics of politics’ as an analytic angle to interrogate contemporary cultural production in the United States. As recent scholarship has observed, American literature and culture around the turn of the millennium, while still deeply informed by the textual self-consciousness of postmodernism, are marked by a rekindled interest in matters of social concern. This revived interest in politics is frequently read as a ‘grand epochal transition.’ Sidestepping such a logic of periodization, this book points to the interplay between the textual and the political as a dynamic – always locally specific – that affords unique insights into the characteristics of the contemporary moment. The sixteen case studies in this book explore this interplay across a wide range of media, genres, and modes. Together, they make visible a broad cultural concern with negotiating social relevance and textual self-awareness that permeates and structures contemporary US (popular) culture.

This book presents a framework for thinking about different forms of internet celebrity that have emerged in the last decade. Through cross-cultural case studies, the book offers a brief history of internet celebrity; analysis on recent developments in the industry; and commentary on emergent trends.

An NPR Favorite Book of the Year Winner of the Critics’ Choice Book Award, American Educational Studies Association Winner of the Mirra Komarovsky Book Award Winner of the CEP–Mildred García Award for Exemplary Scholarship “Eye-opening...Brings home the pain and reality of on-campus poverty and puts the blame squarely on elite institutions.” —Washington Post “Jack’s investigation redirects attention from the matter of access to the matter of inclusion...His book challenges universities to support the diversity they indulge in advertising.” —New Yorker “The lesson is plain—simply admitting low-income students is just the start of a university’s obligations. Once they’re on campus, colleges must show them that they are full-fledged citizen.” —David Kirp, American Prospect “This book should be studied closely by anyone interested in improving diversity and inclusion in higher education and provides a moving call to action for us all.” —Raj Chetty, Harvard University The Ivy League looks different than it used to. College presidents and deans of admission have opened their doors—and their coffers—to support a more diverse student body. But is it enough just to admit these students? In this bracing exposé, Anthony Jack shows that many students’ struggles continue long after they’ve settled in their dorms. Admission, they quickly learn, is not the same as acceptance. This powerfully argued book documents how university policies and campus culture can exacerbate preexisting inequalities and reveals why some students are harder hit than others.

This professional book introduces marketing and luxury brand professionals to a new definition of luxury and the art of designing the ultimate luxury experience in both the physical space (e.g., in-store, hotel, restaurant) and the digital space (e.g., social media, website, e-commerce). Specifically, it offers an overview of customer experience issues and explores big five experiential strategies that can be applied by luxury houses in order to provide the best luxury experience to their customers. Themes such as quality of customer luxury experience, immersion and co-production/co-creation in luxury, creation and management, digital and immersive marketing, and innovative market research are also examined. How do consumers define luxury? Is there one luxury or several “luxuries”? What kind of luxury experiences consumers want to live? How can luxury houses design the ultimate luxury experience? More than in any other sector, luxury consumption is a response to a search for emotions, pleasure, uniqueness, consideration and greatest services. The luxury consumer wants to live luxury experiences – not just buy luxury products or services. In this way, this book presents the luxury consumption experience as a combination of symbolic meaning, subconscious processes and nonverbal cues and characterized by fantasies, feelings and fun. Featuring case studies and interviews from international luxury sectors and brand managers such as Burberry, Dior, Porsche, Breitling, St. Regis Hotels & Resorts, and Louis Vuitton, among others, this book offers both a research and management perspective on luxury experience to professionals in the luxury sector (e.g., CEOs, brand managers, marketing and communication professionals), as well as marketing professors, students, and people eager to learn more about how to design the ultimate luxury experience. Praise for The New Luxury Experience “This book provides a holistic perspective on marketing of luxury brands, offering both useful practical advice as well as illustrating important cases.” -- Ravi Dhar, Director, Yale Center for Customer Insights, Yale University “Wided Batat’s book offers a fresh, insightful and comprehensive analysis of the concept of the consumer’s experience with luxury whatever that may be. The Five experiential luxury strategies proposed by Wided highlight that luxury management should go above and beyond the design and branding of luxury goods and services. I also commend the consideration given to the younger generations’ approach to luxury and to corporate social responsibility aspects. Luxury marketers should find this book very useful indeed.” -- Francesca Dall’Olmo Riley, Professor of Brand Management, Kingston Business School, UK

A New York Times Bestseller Award-winning Vanity Fair writer Nancy Jo Sales crisscrossed the country talking to more than two hundred girls between the ages of thirteen and nineteen about their experiences online and off. They are coming of age online in a hypersexualized culture that has normalized extreme behavior, from pornography to the casual exchange of nude photographs; a culture rife with a virulent new strain of sexism; a culture in which teenagers are spending so much time on technology and social media that they are not developing basic communication skills. The dominant force in the lives of girls coming of age in America today is social media: Instagram, Whisper, Vine, Youtube, Kik, Ask.fm, Tinder. Provocative, explosive, and urgent, American Girls will ignite much-needed conversation about how we can help our daughters and sons negotiate the new social and sexual norms that govern their lives.

Meritocracy today involves the idea that whatever your social position at birth, society ought to offer enough opportunity and mobility for ‘talent’ to combine with ‘effort’ in order to ‘rise to the top’. This idea is one of the most prevalent social and cultural tropes of our time, as palpable in the speeches of politicians as in popular culture. In this book Jo Littler argues that meritocracy is the key cultural means of legitimation for contemporary neoliberal culture – and that whilst it promises opportunity, it in fact creates new forms of social division. Against Meritocracy is split into two parts. Part I explores the genealogies of meritocracy within social theory, political discourse and working cultures. It traces the dramatic U-turn in meritocracy’s meaning, from socialist slur to a contemporary ideal of how a society should be organised. Part II uses a series of case studies to analyse the cultural pull of popular ‘parables of progress’, from reality TV to the super-rich and celebrity CEOs, from social media controversies to the rise of the ‘mumpreneur’. Paying special attention to the role of gender, ‘race’ and class, this book provides new conceptualisations of the meaning of meritocracy in contemporary culture and society.