This book takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the different ways in which the past remains present in Western popular culture in the twenty-first century. It combines theoretical analyses with case study-based chapters focusing on examples from Britain, the US, and Germany, among other countries. In doing so, it pushes beyond a simplistic and monolithic conception of what ‘nostalgia’ is to allow for a more nuanced and varied conceptualisation of this phenomenon, and to also incorporate other ways of understanding the invoking or inclusion of different histories within cultural objects, formats, and practices.

Why has the zombie become such a pervasive figure in twenty-first-century popular culture? John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro and Filip Miscevic seek to answer this question by arguing that particular aspects of the zombie, common to a variety of media forms, reflect a crisis in modern Western culture. The authors examine the essential features of the zombie, including mindlessness, ugliness and homelessness, and argue that these reflect the outlook of the contemporary West and its attendant zeitgeists of anxiety, alienation, disconnection and disenfranchisement. They trace the relationship between zombies and the theme of secular apocalypse, demonstrating that the zombie draws its power from being a perversion of the Christian mythos of death and resurrection. Symbolic of a lost Christian worldview, the zombie represents a world that can no longer explain itself, nor provide us with instructions for how to live within it. The concept of 'domicide' or the destruction of home is developed to describe the modern crisis of meaning that the zombie both represents and reflects. This is illustrated using case studies including the relocation of the Anishinaabe of the Grassy Narrows First Nation, and the upheaval of population displacement in the Hellenistic period. Finally, the authors invoke and reformulate symbols of the four horseman of the apocalypse as rhetorical analogues to frame those aspects of contemporary collapse that elucidate the horror of the zombie. Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis is required reading for anyone interested in the phenomenon of zombies in contemporary culture. It will also be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience including students and scholars of culture studies, semiotics, philosophy, religious studies, eschatology, anthropology, Jungian studies, and sociology.

While globalization is a modern phenomenon, premodern people were also interconnected in early forms of globalism, sharing merchandise, technology, languages, and stories over long distances. Looking across civilizations, this volume takes a broad view of the Middle Ages in order to foster new habits of thinking and develop a multilayered, critical sense of the past. The essays in this volume reach across disciplinary lines to bring insights from music, theater, religion, ecology, museums, and the history of disease into the literature classroom. The contributors provide guidance on texts such as the Thousand and One Nights, Sunjata, Benjamin of Tudela's Book of Travels, and the Malay Annals and on topics such as hotels, maps, and camels. They propose syllabus recommendations, present numerous digital resources, and offer engaging class activities and discussion questions. Ultimately, they provide tools that will help students evaluate popular representations of the Middle Ages and engage with the dynamics of past, present, and future world relationships.

Mock funerals, effigy parading, smearing with eggs and tomatoes, pot-banging and Carnival street theatre, arson and ransacking: all these seemingly archaic forms of action have been regular features of modern European protest, from the 19th to the 21st century. In a wide chronological and geographical framework, this book analyses the uses, meanings, functions and reactivations of folk imagery, behaviour and language in modern collective action. The authors examine the role of protest actors as diverse as peasants, liberal movements, nationalist and separatist parties, anarchists, workers, students, right-wing activists and the global justice movement. So-called traditional repertoires have long been described as residual and obsolete. This book challenges the conventional distinction between pre-industrial and post-1789 forms of collective action, which continues to operate as a powerful dichotomy in the understanding of protest, and casts new light on rituals and symbolic performances that, albeit poorly understood and deciphered, are integral to our protest repertoire.

Consuming History examines how history works in contemporary popular culture. Analysing a wide range of cultural entities from computer games to daytime television, it investigates the ways in which society consumes history and how a reading of this consumption can help us understand popular culture and issues of representation. In this second edition, Jerome de Groot probes how museums have responded to the heritage debate and how new technologies from online game-playing to internet genealogy have brought about a shift in access to history, discussing the often conflicted relationship between ‘public’ and academic history and raising important questions about the theory and practice of history as a discipline. Fully revised throughout with up-to-date examples from sources such as Wolf Hall, Game of Thrones and 12 Years a Slave, this edition also includes new sections on the historical novel, gaming, social media and genealogy. It considers new, ground-breaking texts and media such as YouTube in addition to entities and practices, such as re-enactment, that have been underrepresented in historical discussion thus far. Engaging with a broad spectrum of source material and comparing the experiences of the UK, the USA, France and Germany as well as exploring more global trends, Consuming History offers an essential path through the debates for readers interested in history, cultural studies and the media.

Invaluable resource for anyone who wants to understand contemporary Chinese art, one of the most fascinating art scenes of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.