A book on popular culture's role in mediating contemporary life and power relations in Africa, it demonstrates that popular cultural productions are not fixed to an unchanging social category as the basis for their creation but are defined by mobility of ideas, creative borrowing and improvisation. The authors also provide a compelling reading of how urban legends, rumours and jokes proliferate alongside pop music to express a sub-culture that is at once a critique and a celebration of modernity and its fragments.

A collection of over ninety frightening urban legends, arranged by theme.

For over three hundred years, stories of witches, sea serpents and pirates have amazed and terrified residents of Massachusetts's North Shore. In the summer of 1692, phantom men were spotted in the fields of Gloucester. Farther north, "A" marks the spot for pirate treasure in the marshes of Newbury, while to the east, full moons might bring out the werewolf of Dogtown. The devil himself has burned his mark on the boulder-strewn landscape, while shaggy humanoids have been sighted loping along the coast. From Boston to New Hampshire, Massachusetts's North Shore is filled with remarkable stories and legendary characters. Join author Peter Muise and discover the North Shore's uncanny legends and tales of the paranormal.

Sixty-one tales narrated by Yaquis reflect this people's sense of the sacred and material value of their territory.

This myth-busting compendium sets the record straight on American history, from famous-but-false legends to weird-but-true stories. American history is full of oft-repeated errors and outright fabrications—as well as truths that are stranger than fiction. Collaborating with The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Mary Miley Theobald has uncovered the real stories behind many well-known myth-understandings. Did pregnant women really seclude themselves indoors? Were uneven stairs made to trip up burglars? Did people only bathe once a year? Death by Petticoat reveals the truth about these and many other funny, surprising, and strange misapprehensions of history.

Retold Afro-American folktales of animals, fantasy, the supernatural, and desire for freedom, born of the sorrow of the slaves, but passed on in hope.

Proposing the novel concept of the "literary NGO," this study combines interviews with contemporary East African writers with an analysis of their professional activities and the cultural funding sector to make an original contribution to African literary criticism and cultural studies.

The Routledge Companion to English Language Studies is an accessible guide to the major topics, debates and issues in English Language Studies. This authoritative collection includes entries written by well-known language specialists from a diverse range of backgrounds who examine and explain established knowledge and recent developments in the field. Covering a wide range of topics such as globalization, gender and sexuality and food packaging, this volume provides critical overviews of: approaches to researching, describing and analyzing English the position of English as a global language the use of English in texts, practices and discourses variation and diversity throughout the English-speaking world. Fully cross-referenced throughout and featuring useful definitions of key terms and concepts, this is an invaluable guide for teachers wishing to check, consolidate or update their knowledge, and is an ideal resource for all students of English Language Studies.

This volume brings together insights from distinguished scholars from around the world to address the facts, fiction and creative imaginations in the pervasive portrayals of Africa, its people, societies and cultures in the literature and the media. The fictionalization of Africa and African issues in the media and the popular literature that blends facts and fiction has rendered perceptions of Africa, its cultures, societies, customs, and conflicts often superficial and deficient in the popular Western consciousness. The book brings eminent scholars from a variety of disciplines to sort out the persistent fictionalization of Africa, from facts pertaining to the genesis of powerful cultural, political or religious icons, the historical and cultural significance of "intriguing" customs (such as tribal marks), gender relations, causes of conflicts and African responses, and creative imaginations in contemporary African films, fiction and literature, among others.