The Celebrity Persona Pandemic
The Celebrity Persona Pandemic

Author: P. David Marshall

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2016-10-31

Total Pages: 99

ISBN-13: 1452952264

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The Celebrity Persona Pandemic explores how the construction of a public persona is fetishized in contemporary culture. As social media has progressively led to a greater focus on the production of the self, so this book looks at the most visible versions of persona through figures such as Stephen Colbert, Cate Blachett, and Justin Bieber, as well as fictional characters like Spock and Harry Potter. Ultimately, P. David Marshall closely studies how persona culture shapes our notions of value and significance, and dramatically shifts cultural politics. Forerunners is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital works. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.

The Celebrity Persona Pandemic
The Celebrity Persona Pandemic

Author: P. David Marshall

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781517901059

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The Celebrity Persona Pandemic explores how the construction of a public persona is fetishized in contemporary culture. As social media has progressively led to a greater focus on the production of the self, so this book looks at the most visible versions of persona through figures such as Stephen Colbert, Cate Blachett, and Justin Bieber, as well as fictional characters like Spock and Harry Potter. Ultimately, P. David Marshall closely studies how persona culture shapes our notions of value and significance, and dramatically shifts cultural politics. Forerunners is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital works. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.

Celebrity and Power
Celebrity and Power

Author: P. David Marshall

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2014-08-15

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 1452944024

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Simultaneously celebrated and denigrated, celebrities represent not only the embodiment of success, but also the ultimate construction of false value. Celebrity and Power questions the impulse to become embroiled with the construction and collapse of the famous, exploring the concept of the new public intimacy: a product of social media in which celebrities from Lady Gaga to Barack Obama are expected to continuously campaign for audiences in new ways. In a new Introduction for this edition, P. David Marshall investigates the viewing public’s desire to associate with celebrity and addresses the explosion of instant access to celebrity culture, bringing famous people and their admirers closer than ever before.

The Digital Academic
The Digital Academic

Author: Deborah Lupton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-08-07

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1315473593

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Academic work, like many other professional occupations, has increasingly become digitised. This book brings together leading scholars who examine the impacts, possibilities, politics and drawbacks of working in the contemporary university, using digital technologies. Contributors take a critical perspective in identifying the implications of digitisation for the future of higher education, academic publishing protocols and platforms and academic employment conditions, the ways in which academics engage in their everyday work and as public scholars and relationships with students and other academics. The book includes accounts of using digital media and technologies as part of academic practice across teaching, research administration and scholarship endeavours, as well as theoretical perspectives. The contributors span the spectrum of early to established career academics and are based in education, research administration, sociology, digital humanities, media and communication.

Sport in Aotearoa New Zealand
Sport in Aotearoa New Zealand

Author: Damion Sturm

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-12-28

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1000528472

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This fascinating book investigates the sporting traditions, successes, systems, "terrains" and contemporary issues that underpin sport in New Zealand, also known by its Māori name of Aotearoa. The book unpacks some of the "cliches" around the place, prominence and impact of sport and recreation in Aotearoa New Zealand in order to better understand the country’s sporting history, cultures, institutions and systems, as well as the relationship between sport and different sections of society in the country. Exploring traditional sports such as rugby and cricket, indigenous Māori sport, outdoor recreation and contemporary lifestyle and adventure sports such as marching and parkour, the book examines the contested and conflicting societal, geographical and managerial issues facing contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand sport. Essential reading for anybody with a particular interest in sport in Aotearoa New Zealand, this book is also illuminating reading for anybody working in the sociology of sport, sport development, sport management, sport history or the wider history, politics and culture of Aotearoa New Zealand or the South Pacific.

Storytelling and Collective Psychology
Storytelling and Collective Psychology

Author: Darren Kelsey

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-04-21

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 3030936600

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This book examines the work of psychological illusionist Derren Brown to understand the significance of storytelling and ancient philosophy in our society. Reflecting on the social disconnection and political polarisation of recent times, Darren Kelsey considers how we can rebuild a sense of collective cohesion and common good, weaving together contemporary psychology with ancient Stoicism to cut through the noise of modern life. Kelsey shows that Brown is more than a stage performer: he’s an enlightened magician who offers us guidance for navigating the challenges life throws at us, using his skills and wisdom to help us better understand ourselves and enable human flourishing. In this rigorous examination of Brown’s work, Kelsey makes a compelling case for paying closer attention to our personal, cultural and political stories and beliefs to help create a better future – for ourselves, our communities, and the planet.

Authenticity as Performativity on Social Media
Authenticity as Performativity on Social Media

Author: Allan S. Taylor

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-10-11

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 3031121481

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​Authenticity is a highly-prized concept on social media, but given the history of the term, has it been adequately scrutinised? This book provides an alternative definition of authentic social media practice and suggests that, rather than being an achievable ideal, authenticity reveals itself as an unrepeatable temporary interval. Applying a post-structural lens of performativity, Taylor analyses the resurgence of the authentic as a cultural trend and argues that the professionalisation of social media has given rise to a ‘neoliberal authentic’ that equates productivity with self-actualisation, questioning whether society should present this as a cultural ideal. Using a new critical framework, Taylor recontextualises authenticity in a variety of social media practices. This includes authentic self-representation, authentic influence and its effect in influencer culture, as well as meme production as an attempt to find authenticity. Part-reader, part-manifesto, the book asks readers to reappraise authenticity and provides a working definition for future practice.

Heavy Metal at the Movies
Heavy Metal at the Movies

Author: Gerd Bayer

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-01-22

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 1351333976

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The chapters collected in this volume shed light on the areas of interaction between film studies and heavy metal research, exploring how the audio-visual medium of film relates to, builds on and shapes metal culture. At one end of the spectrum, metal music serves as a form of ambient background in horror films that creates an intense and somewhat threatening atmosphere; at the other end, the high level of performativity attached to the metal spectacle is emphasized. Alongside these tendencies, the recent and ongoing wave of metal documentaries has taken off, relying on either satire or hagiography.

The World Is Gone
The World Is Gone

Author: Gregg Lambert

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2022-02-08

Total Pages: 122

ISBN-13: 1452967180

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Exploring the existential implications of the Covid-19 crisis through meditations Part personal memoir, part philosophical reflection and written in the midst of the pandemic in 2021, The World Is Gone employs the Robinson Crusoe fable to launch an existential investigation of the effects of extreme isolation, profound boredom, nightly insomnia, and the fear of madness associated with the loss of a world populated by others. Forerunners: Ideas First is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital publications. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.

Grounded
Grounded

Author: Christopher Schaberg

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2020-12-08

Total Pages: 85

ISBN-13: 1452965919

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As commercial flight is changing dramatically and its future remains unclear, a look at how we got here Grounded: Perpetual Flight . . . and Then the Pandemic considers the time leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing global plummet in commercial flight. Mobility studies scholar Christopher Schaberg tours the newly opened airport terminal outside of New Orleans (MSY) in late 2019, and goes on to survey the broad cultural landscape of empty airports and grounded planes in the early months of the novel coronavirus’s spread in 2020. The book culminates in a reflection on the future of air travel: what may unfold, and what parts of commercial flight are almost certainly relics of the past. Grounded blends journalistic reportage with cultural theory and philosophical inquiry in order to offer graspable insights as well as a stinging critique of contemporary air travel.