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Focusing on the origins and development of the hard-boiled story, Panek comments on the way it has changed since the 1970s and examines the work of ten significant contemporary writers: Robert B. Parker; James Crumley; Loren Estleman; Sara Paretsky; Robert Crais; James Lee Burke; and Walter Mosley.

This title concerns the different ways in which people use their bodies for self-expression: tattooing, piercing, self-mutilation, which serve both individual and cultural needs.

Vampires, since they found a home in the psyche of the West 250 years ago, have always been objects of fascination for popular audiences. Recently they have gained the attention of scholars in the fields of popular culture, literary history, folklore, and cultural anthropology. Now reduced to a cliche and figure of fun, the vampire originally took on its characteristics in the public imagination from a series of plays written and performed by some of the most important figures in 19th-century theatre: Dion Boucicault, Eugene Scribe, Alexandre Dumas pere, Gilbert and Sullivan, Charles Nodier, T.P. Cooke, Marie Dorval, and J.R. Planche. Roxana Stuart's study approaches the subject primarily from the viewpoint of literary criticism but also includes production history, providing the reader with a useful look at theatre practices, as well as social and psychological insights into popular taste and imagination as reflected in the changing persona with which each period and culture endows the vampire, from the relative innocence of the Romantics to the evolving patterns of sadism, misogyny, and xenophobia of the end of the century.

John le Carre is viewed by many critics as one of the best spy and espionage novel writers. His most famous works are The Spy Who Came in from the Cold; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; and The Little Drummer Girl. Peter Wolfe has produced an informative study of le Carre s works, showing how le Carre s five years in the Service (British Intelligence) helped him become a keen observer, social historian, and expert in bureaucratic politics. He has supplanted the technological flair marking much of today's spy fiction with moral complexity and psychological depth. He shows us what spies are like, how they feel about spying, and how spying affects their minds and hearts."

Approximately 50 historical novels dealing with the American Revolution were published in the USA from 1896 to 1906. This work examines the narrative strategies employed in these novels, the ways in which fiction is made to serve the purpose of vivifying national history.

The history of the study of popular culture in American academic since its (re)introduction in 1967 is filled with misunderstanding and opposition. From the first, proponents of the study of this major portion of american culture made clear that they were interested in making popular culture a supplement to the usual courses in such fields as literature, sociology, history, philosophy, and the other humanities and social sciences; nobody proposed that study of popular culture replace the other disciplines, but many suggested that it was time to reexamine the accepted courses and see if they were still viable. Opposition to the status quo always causes anxiety and oppostion, but when the issues are clarified, often oppoosition and anxiety melt away, as they are now doing.

Beatrice of Bayou Teche is an 1895 novel by a white woman about a black woman artist-protagonist. As the introduction to this reprint edition shows, Alice Ilgenfritz Jones was the first white woman to take an extended interest in the intersection of creativity, race and gender.

This book of essays carefully written by twenty-four authorities on their subjects provides a deep understanding of and appreciation for the coherence, primacy, and importance of the search for identity in the divergent areas of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Europe."

This book takes another look at politics and popular culture. The author has tried to explain the politics of popular culture as part of historical and cultural processes, helping the reader understand not only how popular culture has affected our politics, but also where it is taking us.

Joinings and Disjoinings illustrates the importance of marriage or singleness in short stories and novels and suggests the diverse perspectives the topic can provide on specific works and on analysis of the cultural importance of marriage and marital status. Essays discuss canonical and lesser-known works, providing social, historical, and literary context."

The essays in this book trace many of the multitudinous forces at work on the Constitution and in the popular culture and show how the forces control and benefit each other. The subject is of profound importance and, beginning with these essays, needs to be studied at great length for the benefit of us all.

The subjects treated in this symposium have one major characteristic in common, that they have recently, or relatively recently, enjoyed high popularity among readers. Also, they have received from substantial to torrents of comment.

Travel gets us from one place to another--often with wonderful attendant enjoyment-but exploration makes us understand our travel, the places we travel to--and ourselves. The essays in this collection constitute a major step toward this understanding. They open up new areas for concern and draw many valuable insights and conclusions.

One group of male authors created fiction about the prostitute. The author examines how they attempted to turn an outcast into a heroine in a literature otherwise known for its puritanical attitude toward fallen women. She re-evaluates Stephen Crane's ""Maggie: A Girl of the Streets"", and other works of fiction. She draws on many period sources.

In the world of crime fiction, Arthur W. Upfield stands among the giants. His detective-inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, is one of the most memorable of all crime fighters. Upfield was an independent, fiercely self-assertive ex-Britisher, who loved Australia, especially the Outback. In many ways Upfield became Outback Australia--the "Spirit of Australia."

This study examines sports as both a symbol of American culture and a formative force that shapes American values. Leverett T. Smith Jr. uses high culture, in the form of literature and criticism, to analyze the popular culture of baseball and professional football.

When Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, Tony Hillerman's oddly matched tribal police officers, patrol the mesas and canyons of their Navajo reservation, they join a tradition of Southwestern detectives. In this book, a group of literary critics tracks the mystery and crime novel from the Painted Desert to Death Valley and Salt Lake City.

A perspective on the gothic novel in America, this study engages underlying currents that define American culture as one of consumption through the rereading of canonical texts by Hawthorne, Poe, James and Faulkner, and contemporary gothic novels of Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates and Anne Rice.

The reactions of ordinary people to unusual events reveal the general psychology of a society. These essays are footage in the human action of coping with the phenomena of everyday life. They are accounts of ourselves in the human quest for comfort and safety in a world that is short on both.

Is it possible to understand genres such as drama and theatre without considering the influence of television? This work argues that television's dominance of the entertainment industry demands a continual negotiation of subject position from all other cultural forms and institutions.

Heralded in her day as an ""unsurpassed genius"" and as the ""first lady"" of the Ohio River Valley, Julia Louisa Dumont wrote about the past and present life of ordinary people, pioneers and settlers, when the area was still known as the West. This anthology collects ten of her stories.

This collection of essays articulates the pedagogical strategies of using detective fiction texts to investigate the politics of difference.

The vampire has proliferated in literature in a variety of guises - some antagonistic, some heroic, and many falling into a fascinating ""In between.

Ritual occasions in the movies can bring us to laughter and tears and hope and regret; the chords they strike suggest the complex intersection between American movies and our lives. Major ritual occasions of weddings, baptisms, bar mitzvahs, funerals, graduations, and birthday parties appear in hundreds of popular films produced by Hollywood throughout the 20th century. This study suggests that these stock scenes are more significant to American film than we might have thought.

To this structural analysis, the author adds a new account of the genre's history and its relationship to the myths of the West which have played such an influential role in American history.

Portrayed as dubious moneylenders, underworld operatives, megalomaniacs, Bolshevik saboteurs, or unscrupulous war-profiteers, Jewish characters have surfaced in English detective fiction from the very beginning. Starting with Conan Doyle, and focusing on the Golden Age of the genre, Tunrbull uses multiple examples to trace the evolution of Jewish caricature in British crime writing, and examines fictional representations of Jews in relation to burgeoning antisemitic sentiment within British society. Attention is paid to crime writers as wide-ranging as Baroness Orczy, Sydney Horler, R. Austin Freeman, Ngaio Marsh, and S. T. Haymon, and the depiction of Jews by Golden Age giants Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, and Anthony Berkeley Cox.

Traditionally, romance novels have a reputation as being no more than trashy, sex-filled fantasy escapes for frustrated housewives. But books in this genre account for nearly half of the paperbacks published. Contributors examine the patterns used by the romance authors to tell their stories.

The Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association found a fixed canon and revolutionized the study of the humanities and social sciences in the United States and around the world by making that canon fluid. The full ramifications of this revolt against traditional academia not finished nor fully understood. This is a record of the goals and accomplishments of the pioneers in this field. The essays recall the barriers that the first pop culture scholars faced and tracks their achievements.