If Blackpink were ever a secret, that secret is out. 2019 saw them headline Coachella, and their fandom - known as Blinks - suddenly included Ariana Grande and Harry Styles.

Their concerts sell out in seconds. They are social media superstars. But that's old news. What don't you know about the K-pop group Blackpink? With high-interest, carefully leveled text, this book goes behind the scenes to bring little-known facts to fans of the hit girl group.

Women We Love: Femininities and the Korean Wave is an edited volume exploring femininities in and around the Korean Wave since 2000. While studies on the Korean Wave are abundant, there is a dearth of thought put toward the female-identifying stars, characters, and fans who shape and lead this crucial cultural movement. This collection of essays is one of the first works to focus on gender and the key female actors of this global phenomenon. Using “women” as an inclusive term extending to all those who self-define as women, this volume examines the role of women in K-pop and K-drama industries and fandom spaces, encompassing crucial intersectional topics such as queering of gender, dissemination of media, and fan culture. In addition to the communities engaged with visual culture of the Korean Wave, the audience for Women We Love will reflect the contributors to this text. They are K-pop and K-drama fans, queer, international; they are also academics of Asian histories, sociology, gender and sexuality, art history, and visual culture. The chapters are playful, intersectional, and will be adapted well into syllabi for media studies, gender studies, visual culture studies, sociology, and contemporary global history. “Women We Love goes far beyond the dyad of the flower boy Hallyu star and his female fan to offer readers an illuminating discussion of plural femininities in the Korean Wave since the turn of the millennium. The essays will answer many burning yet heretofore unanswered questions about the affective resonances and political significance of Korean popular culture’s gender dynamics, which have fascinated, puzzled, and at times frustrated many fans and observers. Rigorously interdisciplinary, yet grounded in textual detail, historical context, and material reception practices, this is a timely and valuable contribution to the study of gender, fandom, and global media.” —Michelle Cho, University of Toronto “This is a provoking and fascinating book—one of the most awaited books in Hallyu studies. Drawing from a multitude of feminist theories and case studies, this edited volume not only provides captivating and much-needed discussions but also critically expands the current debates in gender studies, feminism studies, and fan studies. This book is vital literature for researchers, students, and practitioners who are willing to advance their understanding of the Korean Wave from a new scope and angle.” —Dal Yong Jin, Simon Fraser University

Gateways to Understanding Music, Second Edition, explores music in all the categories that constitute contemporary musical experience: European classical, popular, jazz, and world music. Covering the oldest forms of human music making to the newest, this chronology presents music from a global rather than a Eurocentric perspective. Each of 60 "gateways" addresses a particular genre, style, or period of music. Every gateway opens with a guided listening example that unlocks a world of music through careful study of its structural elements. How did the piece come to be composed or performed? How did it respond to the social and cultural issues at the time, and what does that music mean today? Students learn to listen to, explain, understand, and ultimately value all the music they encounter in their world. New to this edition is a broader selection of musical examples that reflect the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion advocated by North American universities. Eight gateways have been replaced. A timeline of gateways helps students see the book’s historical narrative at a glance. Features Values orientation—Diverse, equitable, and inclusive approach to music history. All genres of music—Presents all music as worthy of study, including classical, world, popular, and jazz. Global scope within a historical narrative—Begins with small-scale forager societies up to the present, with a shifting focus from global to European to American influences. Recurring themes — Aesthetics, emotion, social life, links to culture, politics, economics, and technology. Modular framework—60 gateways—each with a listening example—allow flexibility to organize chronologically or by the seven themes. Consistent structure—With the same step-by-step format, students learn through repeated practice how to listen and how to think about music. Anthology of scores—For those courses that use the textbook in a music history sequence. Gateways to Understanding Music continues to employ a website to host the audio examples and instructor’s resources.

Indian traces in Korean Culture examines the enduring cross-cultural discourse between India and Korea over the centuries, emphasizing the transformative power of cultural exchange beyond geographical and temporal constraints. The book analyses how symbols transcend sensory realms and embody spiritual content and suggests that Indian associations in Korean culture reflect a hybridized nature, seamlessly blending cultural elements. The author presents various facets of the cultural exchange between India and Korea, covering Princess Hŏ Hwang-ok's legendary Indian origins shaping Korean identity, Ilyŏn's strategic documentation of Buddhism's transmission, the influence of Indian figures such as Gandhi and Tagore, an exploration of literature from ancient Buddhist verse to modern poets like Kim Yang-shik and Shiva Ryu, and a study of cultural exchange in K-pop. Facilitating a possible alternative to Huntington’s theory of the clash of civilisations, this book provides evidence that the multifaceted encounters between cultures are a historical process that co-shapes civilisational change on a global scale. The first monograph solely dedicated to India-Korea cultural connection from antiquity to the present, this book offers a paradigm shift, inviting readers to explore fresh insights and reshape their understanding of cultural exchanges. It will be of interest to researchers in intercultural communication, Cultural Studies, Cultural History and Asian Studies, in particular Korea and India.

The Psychedelic Diaries marries traditional memoir to today's conversations around sex, drugs, and current world events by following 24-year-old Kaitlin Tilotta's adventures as a professional dominatrix on a deliberate five-month experimental psychedelic drug bender. Upon immersing herself in various roleplays and bizarre psychedelic scenarios, she begins to discover an even deeper level of perspective on not only herself, but the true, unspoken nature of our reality as well. The experiences she acquires, along with the friends and clients she meets along the way, provide a range of character traits and perspectives - by design, encouraging readers to keep thinking about the book and the world around them long after it ends.