Bücher veröffentlicht von University Press of Mississippi

The first Latin American actor to become a superstar, Ramon Novarro was for years one of Hollywood's top actors. Born Ramon Samaniego to a prominent Mexican family, he arrived in America in 1916, a refugee from civil wars. By the mid-1920s, he had become one of MGM's biggest box office attractions, starring in now-classic films, including The Student Prince, Mata Hari, and the original version of Ben-Hur. He shared the screen with the era's top leading ladies, such as Greta Garbo, Myrna Loy, Joan Crawford, and Norma Shearer, and he became Rudolph Valentino's main rival in the "e;Latin Lover"e; category. Yet, despite his considerable professional accomplishments, Novarro's enduring hold on fame stems from his tragic death-his bloodied corpse was found in his house on Halloween 1968 in what has become one of Hollywood's most infamous scandals. A lifelong bachelor, Novarro carefully cultivated his image as a man deeply devoted to his family and to Catholicism. His murder shattered that persona. News reports revealed that the dashing screen hero had not only been gay, but he was dead at the hands of two young, male hustlers. Since then, details of his murder have achieved near mythic proportions, obscuring Novarro's professional legacy. Beyond Paradise presents a full picture of the man who made motion picture history. Including original interviews with Novarro's surviving friends, family, coworkers, and the two men convicted of his murder, this biography provides unique insights into an early Hollywood star-a man whose heart was forever in conflict with his image and whose myth continues to fascinate today.

"e;There is no better, smarter examination of the relationship between comics and film."e;--Mark Waid, Eisner Award-winning writer of Kingdom Come and DaredevilIn the summer of 2000 X-Men surpassed all box office expectations and ushered in an era of unprecedented production of comic book film adaptations. This trend, now in its second decade, has blossomed into Hollywood's leading genre. From superheroes to Spartan warriors, The Comic Book Film Adaptation offers the first dedicated study to examine how comic books moved from the fringes of popular culture to the center of mainstream film production.Through in-depth analysis, industry interviews, and audience research, this book charts the cause-and-effect of this influential trend. It considers the cultural traumas, business demands, and digital possibilities that Hollywood faced at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The industry managed to meet these challenges by exploiting comics and their existing audiences. However, studios were caught off-guard when these comic book fans, empowered by digital media, began to influence the success of these adaptations. Nonetheless, filmmakers soon developed strategies to take advantage of this intense fanbase, while codifying the trend into a more lucrative genre, the comic book movie, which appealed to an even wider audience. Central to this vibrant trend is a comic aesthetic in which filmmakers utilize digital filmmaking technologies to engage with the language and conventions of comics like never before.The Comic Book Film Adaptation explores this unique moment in which cinema is stimulated, challenged, and enriched by the once-dismissed medium of comics.

Presents a collection of essays about autobiography, semiautobiography, fictionalized autobiography, memory, and self-narration in sequential art, or comics. Contributors come from a range of academic backgrounds including English, American studies, comparative literature, gender studies, art history, and cultural studies.

The Beatles: Image and the Media charts the transformation of the Beatles from teen idols to leaders of the youth movement and powerful cultural agents. Drawing upon American mainstream print media, broadcasts, albums, films, and videos, the study covers the band's career in the United States. Michael R. Frontani explores how the Beatles' media image evolved and how this transformation related to cultural and historical events. Upon their arrival in the U.S., the Beatles wore sharply tailored suits and cast themselves as adorable, accessible teen heartthrobs. By the end of the decade, they had absorbed the fashion and consciousness of the burgeoning counterculture and were using their interviews, media events, and music to comment on issues such as the Vietnam War, drug culture, and civil rights. Frontani traces the steps that led to this change and comments on how the band's mantra of essential optimism never wavered despite the evolution of its media profile.

The Beat! was the first book to explore the musical, social, and cultural phenomenon of go-go music. In this new edition, updated by a substantial chapter on the current scene, authors Kip Lornell and Charles C. Stephenson, Jr., place go-go within black popular music made since the middle 1970s - a period during which hip-hop has predominated.

This reprinting makes available again the only book of its kind to be focused upon the prehistoric Indians of Mississippi. Although written expressly for the layreader, it has continued for more than eighty years to appeal to a wide audience that ranges from professional archeologists and scholars to weekend artifact collectors.

Rhythm & Blues emerged from the African American community in the late 1940s to become the driving force in American popular music over the next half-century. The New Blue Music traces the development of R&B from 1950 to 1999 by closely analyzing the top twenty-five songs of each decade.

Designed for the professional scholar, the student, and the general reader with no training in Middle English, this edition brings together the tools for both introductory and advanced study. Charles Moorman has tried to make the text as readable, the notes as succinct and informative, and the glossary as useful as possible.

In his long literary career, John Fowles has managed the feats of welding stunning innovation to tradition, pushing the formal boundaries of literary fiction, and still capturing critical acclaim and popular success. In this first book of interviews devoted to Fowles, Dianne Vipond gathers over twenty of his most revealing interviews.

For many months after Hurricane Katrina, life in New Orleans meant negotiating streets strewn with debris and patrolled by the United States Army. Most of the city was without power. Emptied and ruined houses, businesses, schools, and churches stretched for miles through once thriving neighborhoods.Almost immediately, however, die-hard New Orleanians began a homeward journey. A travelogue through this surreal landscape, A Season of Night: New Orleans Life after Katrina offers a deeply intimate, firsthand account of that homecoming. After the floodwaters drained, author Ian McNulty returned to live on the second floor of his wrecked house without electricity or neighbors. For months his sanity was writing this book on a laptop by candlelight.By turns haunting, inspiring, and darkly comic, this memoir offers a behind-the-headlines story of resilience and renewal. From bittersweet camaraderie in the wreckage to depression and violent rampages in the lawless night to the first flickers of cultural revival and the explosive joy of a post-Katrina Mardi Gras, A Season of Night delivers an unprecedented tale from the wounded but always enthralling Crescent City. Learn more about the book and its author at http://www.seasonofnight.com/

George P. Knauff's Virginia Reels (1839) was the first collection of southern fiddle tunes and the only substantial one published in the nineteenth century. Knauff's activity could not anticipate our modern contest-driven fiddle subcultures. But the fate of the Virginia Reels pointed in that direction, suggesting that southern fiddling, after his time, would happen outside of commercial popular culture even though it would sporadically engage that culture. Chris Goertzen uses this seminal collection as the springboard for a fresh exploration of fiddling in America, past and present. He first discusses the life of the arranger. Then he explains how this collection was meant to fit into the broad stream of early nineteenth-century music publishing. Goertzen describes the character of these fiddle tunes' names (and such titles in general), what we can learn about antebellum oral tradition from this collection, and how fiddling relates to blackface minstrelsy. Throughout the book, the author connects the evidence concerning both repertoire and practice found in the Virginia Reels with current southern fiddling, encompassing styles ranging from straightforward to fancy-old-time styles of the Upper South, exuberant West Virginia styles, and the melodic improvisations of modern contest fiddling. Twenty-six song sheets assist in this discovery. Goertzen incorporates performance descriptions and music terminology into his accessible, engaging prose. Unlike the vast majority of books on American fiddling-regional tune collections or histories-this book presents an extended look at the history of southern fiddling and a close examination of current practices.

This study reveals how historian Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) used the black press and modern public relations techniques to popularize black history during the first half of the twentieth century. Explanations for Woodson's success with the modern black history movement usually include his training, deep-rooted principles, and single-minded determination. Often overlooked, however, is Woodson's skillful use of newspapers in developing and executing a public education campaign built on truth, accuracy, fairness, and education. Burnis R. Morris explains how Woodson attracted mostly favorable news coverage for his history movement due to his deep understanding of the newspapers' business and editorial models as well as his public relations skills, which helped him merge the interests of the black press with his cause.Woodson's publicity tactics, combined with access to the audiences granted him by the press, enabled him to drive the black history movement--particularly observance of Negro History Week and fundraising activities. Morris analyzes Woodson's periodicals, newspaper articles, letters, and other archived documents describing Woodson's partnership with the black press and his role as a publicist. This rarely explored side of Woodson, who was often called the "e;Father of Black History,"e; reintroduces Woodson's lost image as a leading cultural icon who used his celebrity in multiple roles as an opinion journalist, newsmaker, and publicist of black history to bring veneration to a disrespected subject. During his active professional career, 1915-1950, Woodson merged his interests and the interests of the black newspapers. His cause became their cause.

Collects Gloria Naylor's interviews and shows her to be one of the most talented novelists to emerge in the past twenty years. The fourteen interviews that are included range from 1983, soon after the publication of her first novel, to 2000, following the publication of The Men of Brewster Place.

Sheds light on Edwidge Danticat and her ability to depict issues in sparkling prose that delves deep into the borderlands, an uncharted in-between space located outside fixed geographic, cultural, and ideological bounds. Prevalent throughout many interviews here is Danticat's expressed determination to reveal Haitian immigrant experience, and make that nuanced culture accessible to a wide audience.

Since the earliest days of the nation, US citizenship has been linked to military service. Even though blacks fought and died in all American wars, their own freedom was usually restricted or denied. In many ways, World War II exposed this contradiction.As demand for manpower grew during the war, government officials and military leaders realized that the war could not be won without black support. To generate African American enthusiasm, the federal government turned to mass media. Several government films were produced and distributed, movies that have remained largely unexamined by scholars. Kathleen M. German delves into the dilemma of race and the federal government's attempts to appeal to black patriotism and pride even while postponing demands for equality and integration until victory was achieved.German's study intersects three disciplines: the history of the African American experience in World War II, the theory of documentary film, and the study of rhetoric. One of the main films of the war era, The Negro Soldier, fractured the long tradition of degrading minstrel caricatures by presenting a more dignified public image of African Americans. Along with other government films, the narrative within The Negro Soldier transformed the black volunteer into an able soldier. It included African Americans in the national mythology by retelling American history to recognize black participation. As German reveals, through this new narrative with more dignified images, The Negro Soldier and other films performed rhetorical work by advancing the agenda of black citizenship.

In 1955 Puerto Rican immigrant Frank Santana was sentenced to twenty-five years to life for second-degree murder. Fredric Wertham, an influential authority on child psychology, was outraged and felt compelled to write The Circle of Guilt. This edition includes a new introduction that places both the crime and Wertham's work into context.

From nineteenth-century American art and literature to comic books of the twentieth century and afterwards, Chad A. Barbour examines in From Daniel Boone to Captain America the transmission of the ideals and myths of the frontier and playing Indian in American culture.

Fans and critics alike perceive Wong Kar-wai (b. 1958) as an enigma. His dark glasses, his nonlinear narrations, and his high expectations for actors all contribute to an assumption that he only makes art for a few high-brow critics. However Wong's interviews show this Hong Kong auteur is candid about the art of filmmaking, even surprising his interlocutors by suggesting his films are commercial and made for a popular audience.Wong's achievements nevertheless feel like art-house cinema. His third film, Chungking Express, introduced him to a global audience captivated by the quick and quirky editing style. His Cannes award-winning films Happy Together and In the Mood for Love confirmed an audience beyond the greater Chinese market. His latest film, The Grandmaster, depicts the life of a kung fu master by breaking away from the martial arts genre. In each of these films, Wong Kar-wai's signature style--experimental, emotive, character-driven, and timeless--remains apparent throughout.This volume includes interviews that appear in English for the first time, including some that appeared in Hong Kong magazines now out of print. The interviews cover every feature film from Wong's debut As Tears Go By to his 2013 The Grandmaster.

With contributions by:Greg Barnhisel, John N. Duvall, Kristin Fujie, Sarah E. Gardner, Jaime Harker, Kristi Rowan Humphreys, Robert Jackson, Mary A. Knighton, Jennifer Nolan, Carl Rollyson, Tim A. Ryan, Jay Satterfield, Erin A. Smith, and Yung-Hsing WuWilliam Faulkner's first ventures into print culture began far from the world of highbrow New York publishing houses such as Boni & Liveright or Random House and little magazines such as the Double Dealer. With that diverse publishing history in mind, this collection explores Faulkner's multifaceted engagements, as writer and reader, with the US and international print cultures of his era, along with how these cultures have mediated his relationship with various twentieth- and twenty-first-century audiences.These essays address the place of Faulkner and his writings in the creation, design, publishing, marketing, reception, and collecting of books, in the culture of twentieth-century magazines, journals, newspapers, and other periodicals (from pulp to avant-garde), in the history of modern readers and readerships, and in the construction and cultural politics of literary authorship.Several contributors focus on Faulkner's sensational 1931 novel Sanctuary to illustrate the author's multifaceted relationship to the print ecology of his time, tracing the novel's path from the wellsprings of Faulkner's artistic vision to the novel's reception among reviewers, tastemakers, intellectuals, and other readers of the early 1930s. Other essayists discuss Faulkner's early notices, the Saturday Review of Literature, Saturday Evening Post, men's magazines of the 1950s, and Cold War modernism.

Reveals an artist and activist whose work deftly negotiates boundaries of feminism, nationalism, and film. The intimacy of these collaborations or conversations between Bambara (1939-1995) and her interviewers provides an excellent and necessary resource for those interested in scholarly approaches to her fiction.

A comprehensive view of the fascinating folklife in the Appalachian foothills of North and South Carolina

Exploring the diverse functions of space in Faulkner's artistic vision, the eleven essays in Faulkner's Geographies delve deep into Yoknapatawpha but also reach beyond it, to uncover unsuspected connections and flows linking local, regional, national, hemispheric, and global geographies in Faulkner's writings.

William Faulkner's life was rich in what he saw and read, and he seems to have remembered all of it and put it to use in his fiction. Faulkner's Inheritance is a collection of essays that examines the influences on Faulkner's fiction, including his own family history, Jim Crow laws, contemporary fashion, popular culture, and literature.

Arrested as a Freedom Rider in June of 1961, Carol Ruth Silver, a twenty-two-year-old recent college graduate originally from Massachusetts, spent the next forty days in Mississippi jail cells, including the Maximum Security Unit at the infamous Parchman Prison Farm. She chronicled the events and her experiences on hidden scraps of paper which amazingly she was able to smuggle out. These raw written scraps she fashioned into a manuscript, which has waited, unread for more than fifty years. Freedom Rider Diary is that account.Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 to test the US Supreme Court rulings outlawing segregation in interstate bus and terminal facilities. Brutality and arrests inflicted on the Riders called national attention to the disregard for federal law and the local violence used to enforce segregation. Police arrested Riders for trespassing, unlawful assembly, and violating state and local Jim Crow laws, along with other alleged offenses, but they often allowed white mobs to attack the Riders without arrest or intervention.This book offers a heretofore unavailable detailed diary from a woman Freedom Rider along with an introduction by historian Raymond Arsenault, author of the definitive history of the Freedom Rides. In a personal essay detailing her life before and after the Freedom Rides, Silver explores what led her to join the movement and explains how, galvanized by her actions and those of her compatriots in 1961, she spent her life and career fighting for civil rights. Framing essays and personal and historical photographs make the diary an ideal book for the general public, scholars, and students of the movement that changed America.

Because of its diversity and openness to new cultures and religions, New Orleans provided fertile ground to nurture Spiritualism. Melissa Daggett focuses on Le Cercle Harmonique, the francophone seance circle of Henry Louis Rey (1831-1894), a Creole of colour who was a key civil rights activist, author, and Civil War and Reconstruction leader.

Given the presumed dominance of American sport, many fans throughout the hemisphere find it difficult to envision the role of sport beyond the confines of their own continent. Rather than focusing on the Western Hemisphere, this collection of some of world sport's most heralded celebrities serves as a sort of passport to many places that make up our global sporting environment.

The mass media promotion of the feminist profile, according to Patricia Bradley, author of Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 1963-1975 proved to be a double-edged sword,. She argues that, although millions of women learned about feminism by way of the mass media, detrimental stereotypes emerged overnight.

A unique exploration of adaptation theory and how one dramatic visual style affects another

Essays on the seemingly unstoppable writer, producer, director, actor, and entrepreneur Tyler PerryContributions by Leah Aldridge, Karen M. Bowdre, Aymar Jean Christian, Keith Corson, Rachel Jessica Daniel, Artel Great, Brandeise Monk-Payton, Miriam Petty, Paul N. Reinsch, Rashida Z. Shaw, Samantha N. Sheppard, Ben Raphael Sher, and Khadijah Costley WhiteFor over a decade Tyler Perry has been a lightning rod for both criticism and praise. To some he is most widely known for his drag performances as Madea, a self-proclaimed "mad black woman," not afraid to brandish a gun or a scalding pot of grits. But to others who watch the film industry, he is the businessman who by age thirty-six had sold more than $100 million in tickets, $30 million in videos, $20 million in merchandise, and was producing 300 projects each year viewed by 35,000 every week.Is the commercially successful African American actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, and producer "malt liquor for the masses," an "embarrassment to the race!," or is he a genius who has directed the most culturally significant American melodramas since Douglas Sirk? Are his films and television shows even melodramas, or are they conservative Christian diatribes, cheeky camp, or social satires? Do Perry's flattened narratives and character tropes irresponsibly collapse important social discourses into one-dimensional tales that affirm the notion of a "post-racial" society?In light of these debates, From Madea to Media Mogul makes the argument that Tyler Perry must be understood as a figure at the nexus of converging factors, cultural events, and historical traditions. Contrbutors demonstrate how a critical engagement with Perry's work and media practices highlights a need for studies to grapple with developing theories and methods on disreputable media. These essays challenge value-judgment criticisms and offer new insights on the industrial and formal qualities of Perry's work.TreaAndrea M. Russworm, Amherst, Massachusetts, is an assistant professor of English at UMass Amherst. Her work has been published in Cinema Journal's Teaching Media and the books Watching While Black and Game On, Hollywood! Samantha N. Sheppard, Ithaca, New York, is an assistant professor of cinema and media studies at Cornell University. Her work has appeared in Cinema Journal and the edited collection The L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema. Karen M. Bowdre, Radnor, Pennsylvania, is an independent scholar who has published in Black Camera; Cinema Journal; and Falling in Love Again: The Contemporary Romantic Comedy.