This volume introduces a new concept that boldly breaks through the traditional dichotomy of high and low culture while offering a fresh approach to both: unpopular culture. From the works of David Foster Wallace and Ernest Hemingway to fanfiction and The Simpsons, from natural disasters to 9/11 and beyond, the essays find the unpopular across media and genres, analysing the politics and aesthetics of a side to culture that has been overlooked by previous theories and methods in cultural studies.

Dr. Sascha Pöhlmann is an associate professor in American Literary History at Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich, Germany.Prof. Dr. Martin Lüthe is an associate professor in North American Cultural Studies at the John-F.Kennedy Institute at Freie University Berlin.

Introduction: What is Unpopular Culture?Martin Lüthe & Sascha PöhlmannWhy We Talk the Talk We Talk: On the Emptiness of Terms, the Processual Un/Popular, and Benefits of Distinction-Some Auto-Ethnographical RemarksMartin ButlerBig Fish: On the Relative Popularity of Zane Grey and Ernest Hemingway Dominika FerensHow (Not) to Make People Like You: The Anti-Popular Art of David Foster WallaceJames DorsonDissenting Commodities: Negotiations of (Un)popularity in Publications Critical of Post-9/11 U.S.-AmericaElizabeth KovachSecrets, Lies and The Real Housewives: The Death of an (Un)Popular GenreDaniel UdyKaraoke Americanism Gangnam Style: K-pop, Wonder Girls, and the Asian UnpopularJeroen de Kloet & Jaap Kooijman'When order is lost, time spits': The Abject Unpopular Art of Genesis (Breyer) P-OrridgeFlorian Zappe'Famous in a Small Town': The Authenticity of Unpopularity in Contemporary Country Music Christian SchmidtMaking Christianity Cool: Christian Pop Music's Quest for PopularityBärbel HarjuListening to Bad Music: White Power and (Un)Popular CultureC. Richard KingHipster Black Metal? Deafheaven's Sunbather and the Evolution of an (Un)popular GenrePaola FerreroUnpopular Culture and the American Reception of TinariwenBarry ShankCultural Studies and the Un/Popular. How the Ass-Kicking Work of Steven Seagal May Wrist-Break Our Paradigms of CultureDietmar MeinelUnpopular Sport Teams and the Social Psychology of 'Anti-Fans'Karsten SenkbeilPopular, Unpopular: When WWI Museums Meet FacebookCatherine BuokoUnpopular American Natural Calamities and the Selectivity of Disaster Memory Susanne LeikamThe Unpopular Profession? Graduate Studies in the Humanities and the Genre of the 'Thesis Hatement'Sebastian M. Herrmann