Postmodern Pirates offers a comprehensive analysis of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean series and the pirate motif through the lens of postmodern theories. Susanne Zhanial shows how the postmodern elements determine the movies’ aesthetics, narratives, and character portrayals, but also places the movies within Hollywood’s contemporary blockbuster machinery. The book then offers a diachronic analysis of the pirate motif in British literature and Hollywood movies. It aims to explain our ongoing fascination with the maritime outlaw, focuses on how a text’s cultural background influences the pirate’s portrayal, and pays special attention to the aspect of gender. Through the intertextual references in Pirates of the Caribbean, the motif’s development is always tied to Disney’s postmodern movie series.

Popular Culture, Piracy, and Outlaw Pedagogy explores the relationship between power and resistance by critiquing the popular cultural image of the pirate represented in Pirates of the Caribbean. Of particular interest is the reliance on modernism’s binary good/evil, Sparrow/Jones, how the films’ distinguish the two concepts/characters via corruption, and what we may learn from this structure which I argue supports neoliberal ideologies of indifference towards the piratical Other. What became evident in my research is how the erasure of corruption via imperial and colonial codifications within seventeenth century systems of culture, class hierarchies, and language succeeded in its re-presentation of the pirate and members of a colonized India as corrupt individuals with empire emerging from the struggle as exempt from that corruption. This erasure is evidenced in Western portrayals of Somali pirates as corrupt Beings without any acknowledgement of transnational corporations’ role in provoking pirate resurgence in that region. This forces one to re-examine who the pirate is in this situation. Erasure is also evidenced in current interpretations of both Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Obama’s Race to the Top initiative. While NCLB created conditions through which corruption occurred, I demonstrate how Race to the Top erases that corruption from the institution of education by placing it solely into the hands of teachers, thus providing the institution a “free pass” to engage in any behavior it deems fit. What pirates teach us, then, are potential ways to thwart the erasure process by engaging a pedagogy of passion, purpose, radical love and loyalty to the people involved in the educational process.

In 1991, Laura Slatkin published The Power of Thetis: Allusion and Interpretation in the Iliad, in which she argued that Homer knowingly situated the storyworld of the Iliad against the backdrop of an older world of mythos by which the events in the Iliad are explained and given traction. Slatkin’s focus was on Achilles’ mother, Thetis: an ostensibly marginal and powerless goddess, Thetis nevertheless drives the plot of the Iliad, being allusively credited with the power to uphold or challenge the rule of Zeus. Now, almost thirty years after Slatkin’s publication, this timely volume re-examines depictions and receptions of this ambiguous goddess, in works ranging from archaic Greek poetry to twenty-first century cinema. Twenty authors build upon Slatkin’s readings to explore Thetis and multiple roles she played in Western literature, art, material culture, religion, and myth. Ever the shapeshifter, Thetis has been and continues to be reconceptualised: supporter or opponent of Zeus’ regime, model bride or unwilling victim of Peleus’ rape, good mother or child-murderess, figure of comedy or monstrous witch. Hers is an enduring power of transformation, resonating within art and literature.

Growth against Democracy: Savage Developmentalism in the Modern World, by H.L.T. Quan, is a radical critique of development as a modern project. Using three historical cases (Brazil-Japan, China-Africa, and US-Iraq), Quan probes the discursive practices of modern development, exploring the coercive and juridical dimensions of trade, diplomacy and war and their impact. This study builds on the critical works of neoliberalism, capitalist development, and empire to lay the groundwork for an honest assessment of neoliberal economics and foreign conducts and their impact on human life.

This set surveys American misogyny in all its cultural forms, from popular music, film, and education to healthcare, politics, and business. The work also assesses proposals to confront and reduce such expressions of hatred. The essays contained in this two-volume set explore misogyny within various areas of American culture to demonstrate its pervasiveness and identify common foundations of its many presentations. Beyond a basic definition of misogyny, which includes hatred of women and girls and the ways in which this hatred and distrust influences action, speech, discrimination, policy, and culture in the United States, this project also aims to expand and complicate definitions of misogyny in order to provide readers with a robust introduction to and understanding of the larger topic. Given the current political and cultural climate and the more frequent and widespread use of the term "misogyny" by various media outlets and voters during the 2016 presidential election, this book has the potential both to contribute to ongoing conversations on misogyny and, among its intended audience of advanced high school, beginning college students and the general public, to inform a shift currently unfolding in public conversation on the topic.

In Rebels Wit Attitude, music writer and professor Iain Ellis throws a spotlight on the history of humor as a weapon of anti-establishment rebellion, paying tribute to the great rebel humorists in American rock history and investigating comedy and laughter as the catalyst and main expressive force in these artists' work. The performers who are the subject of Ellis's study are not merely funny people - they are those whose art exudes defiance and resistance, whether aimed at social structures and mores, political systems, aesthetic practices, or the music industry itself. Subversive rock humor has emerged as a formidable force of modern art, building a reputation for rock music as a rebellious - sometimes dangerous - form of expression that can dismay the adult mainstream as it empowers the youth culture. In this study of rock's impact on youth through the decades, Ellis proves that the most subversive rock humorists serve as the conscience of our culture. They chastise pretensions, satirize hypocrisy, and pour scorn on power, corruption, and lies. Discussing the work of iconic figures as diverse as Chuck Berry, Lou Reed, the Ramones, the Talking Heads, the Beastie Boys, Missy Elliott, Ellis examines the nature of the rock humorist, asking why and in what ways each performer uses humor as a weapon of resistance to various status quos. The commentary on these artists' work is the basis for a deeper discussion of the historical foundations and other socio-cultural contexts of humorous art, and Ellis delves into the larger issues of politics, nationality, geography, generation, art, social class, race, gender and sexuality that surround his subject. The chapters, divided by decade, include introductory sections outlining each decade's defining forces and contextual features. While lyrics constitute Ellis's primary field of analysis, his exploration goes well beyond that, moving into a discussion and interpretation of image, performance, product, and musical content.

Into the Mainstream: Essays on Spanish American and Latino Literature and Culture is a direct outgrowth of Jorge Febles’s involvement with the annual conference of the American Culture Association and the Popular Culture Association. In that sense, the compilation expands on a project initiated in 1993 by Helen Ryan-Ransom with her book Imagination, Emblems and Expressions: Essays on Latin American, Caribbean, and Continental Culture and Identity (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993). David William Foster, who penned a lengthy preface to that collection, justified its intent by underscoring: “The very fact that our approach to culture is dominated by categories based on high, academic, institutionalized phenomena poses from the very outset the question of how to deal with all those other cultural manifestations that do not comfortably assimilate to the accepted canon” (Ryan-Ransom 3). The past fourteen years, however, have witnessed a radical transformation of that so-called canon due to the widespread acceptance of ideas espoused by cultural theorists like García Canclini, Homi Bhabba, Said, Stuart Hall, Benhabib, Bourdieu and countless others. Therefore, the ambivalence regarding what constitutes culture identified by Foster is inoperative nowadays to a substantial degree. In fact, a fundamental component of the postmodern outlook resides in the ability to blend comfortably the high and the low, the elitist and the popular realms of production in a multiplicity of textual artifacts, creative as well as critical in nature. Hence, the essays that conform Into the Mainstream do not question barriers anymore, nor do they expound on the need to assign a discursive intellectual space to matters pertaining to popular culture. Thus, this collection espouses an inclusive approach in which a variety of analytical approaches coalesce to reflect on an equally kaleidoscopic textuality. Pursuant to its comprehensive nature, Into the Mainstream airs established as well as developing critical voices so as to reflect both ideological continuity and evolving viewpoints. Scholars who have compiled strong academic records like Hortensia Morell, Raquel Rivas Rojas, Elsa Gilmore, David Petreman and Benjamín Torres Caballero share a venue with younger critics like Corey Shouse Tourino, Roberto Vela Córdova, Stacy Hoult, Eduardo del Río, Bruce Campbell, Laura Redruello, Dinora Cardoso and April Marshall, as well as with two graduate students about to complete their academic preparation: Nuria Ibáñez Quintana and María Teresa Vera Rojas. The result is an eclectic compilation meant to elicit discussion on the basis of its variety. Into the Mainstream’s primordial objective is to place these provocative essays—which are expanded versions of papers presented during the annual gathering of the American Culture Association and the Popular Culture Association in the period 2002-2005—along with the numerous subjects they treat in the academic mainstream where they rightfully belong.

This collection of new essays covers the myriad portrayals of the figure of the pirate in historical records, literary narratives, films, television series, opera, anime and games. Contributors explore the nuances of both real and fictional pirates, giving attention to renowned works such as Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, the Pirates of the Caribbean saga, and the anime One Piece, as well as less well known works such as pirate romances, William Clarke Russell's The Frozen Pirate, Lionel Lindsay's artworks, Steven Speilberg's The Adventures of Tintin, and Pastafarian texts.

The Reception of Northrup Frye takes a thorough accounting of the presence of Frye in existing works and argues against Frye's diminishing status as an important critical voice.