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1668 books match the query 'Popular culture' and 17 start with j

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J. K. Rowling and the Anti-Trans Panic

Gina Gwenffrewi

The Ohio State University Press, 2026

A grippingly personal analysis of J. K. Rowling’s rise as an anti-trans activist, its media and pop cultural context, and trans resistance to the moral panic she has stoked.

In J. K. Rowling and the Anti-Trans Panic, Gina Gwenffrewi weaves her own experience as a trans woman living in Edinburgh, Scotland, with analysis of political and pop cultural discourses and artifacts to deliver a trenchant study of how fellow Edinburgh resident J. K. Rowling’s emergence as a major anti-trans campaigner and the years-long entrenchment of existing anti-trans forces have converged. Analyzing Rowling’s output since 2020, a series of anti-trans events at the University of Edinburgh, the transphobic comedy of Ricky Gervais within the British media landscape, YouTube commentaries, and more, Gwenffrewi creates a potent taxonomy of the rhetorical devices and foundational assumptions of anti-trans discourse. While the 2020s UK has proved fertile ground for “gender-critical” feminism, she argues, it has also provided the foundation for sites of resistance and for bolstering transgender voices worldwide. In celebrating trans activism and trans joy amid adversity, Gwenffrewi beautifully captures the light and dark of being out as trans in the city that—if it can fairly be called ground zero for anti-trans fervor—also embodies liberatory possibilities for trans people worldwide.

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Janelle Monáe's Queer Afrofuturism

Defying Every Label

Dan Hassler-Forest

Rutgers University Press, 2022

Singer. Dancer. Movie star. Activist. Queer icon. Afrofuturist. Working class heroine. Time traveler. Prophet. Feminist. Android. Dirty Computer.

Janelle Monáe is all these things and more, making her one of the most fascinating artists to emerge in the twenty-first century. This provocative new study explores how Monáe’s work has connected different media platforms to strengthen and enhance new movements in art, theory, and politics. It considers not only Monáe’s groundbreaking albums The ArchAndroid, The Electric Lady, and Dirty Computer, but also Monáe’s work as an actress in such films as Hidden Figures and Antebellum, as well as her soundtrack appearances in socially-engaged projects ranging from I May Destroy You to Us. Examining Monáe as a cultural icon whose work is profoundly intersectional, this book maps how she is actively reshaping discourses around race, gender, sexuality, and capitalism. Tracing Monáe’s performances of joy, desire, pain, and hope across a wide range of media forms, it shows how she imagines Afrofuturist, posthumanist, and postcapitalist utopias, while remaining grounded in the realities of being a Black woman in a white-dominated industry. This is an exciting introduction to an audacious innovator whose work offers us fresh ways to talk about identity, desire, and power.

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Japan After Japan

Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present

Tomiko Yoda and Harry Harootunian, eds.

Duke University Press, 2006

The prolonged downturn in the Japanese economy that began during the recessionary 1990s triggered a complex set of reactions both within Japan and abroad, reshaping not only the country’s economy but also its politics, society, and culture. In Japan After Japan, scholars of history, anthropology, literature, and film explore the profound transformations in Japan since the early 1990s, providing complex analyses of a nation in transition, linking its present to its past and connecting local situations to global developments.

Several of the essayists reflect on the politics of history, considering changes in the relationship between Japan and the United States, the complex legacy of Japanese colonialism, Japan’s chronic unease with its wartime history, and the postwar consolidation of an ethnocentric and racist nationalism. Others analyze anxieties related to the role of children in society and the weakening of the gendered divide between workplace and home. Turning to popular culture, contributors scrutinize the avid consumption of “real events” in formats including police shows, quiz shows, and live Web camera feeds; the creation, distribution, and reception of Pokémon, the game-based franchise that became a worldwide cultural phenomenon; and the ways that the behavior of zealous fans of anime both reinforces and clashes with corporate interests. Focusing on contemporary social and political movements, one essay relates how a local citizens’ group pressed the Japanese government to turn an international exposition, the Aichi Expo 2005, into a more environmentally conscious project. Another essay offers both a survey of emerging political movements and a manifesto identifying new possibilities for radical politics in Japan. Together the contributors to Japan After Japan present much-needed insight into the wide-ranging transformations of Japanese society that began in the 1990s.

Contributors. Anne Allison, Andrea G. Arai, Eric Cazdyn, Leo Ching, Harry Harootunian, Marilyn Ivy, Sabu Kohso, J. Victor Koschmann, Thomas LaMarre, Masao Miyoshi, Yutaka Nagahara, Naoki Sakai, Tomiko Yoda, Yoshimi Shunya, Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto

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Jazz Journeys to Japan

The Heart Within

William Minor

University of Michigan Press, 2004

Part music history, part cultural meditation, part travel narrative, Jazz Journeys to Japan is the first book to address the experiences of individual players -- Japanese jazz greats such as Toshiko Akiyoshi, Masahiko Satoh, Makoto Ozone, and Yosuke Yamashita.
William Minor navigates the converging streams of Western music and Eastern tradition, revealing through interviews with musicians, critics, and producers the unique synthesis that results from this convergence. And, turning conventional wisdom on its ear, he disproves the widely held notion that Japanese jazz artists don't "swing." Along the way, we experience Minor's growing appreciation of Japanese culture, which mirrors his subjects' discovery of American jazz.
William Minor's previous books include Unzipped Souls: A Jazz Journey through the Soviet Union, and Monterey Jazz Festival: Forty Legendary Years. He has written for Downbeat, Jazz Times, Jazz Notes, Coda, and Swing Journal.

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Jewhooing the Sixties

American Celebrity and Jewish Identity—Sandy Koufax, Lenny Bruce, Bob Dylan, and Barbra Streisand

David E. Kaufman

Brandeis University Press, 2012

Sandy Koufax, Lenny Bruce, Bob Dylan, and Barbra Streisand first came to public attention in the early 1960s, a period Kaufman identifies as historically ripe for American Jews to reexamine their (Jewish) identities. All four achieved extraordinary success in their respective fields and became celebrities within an American context, while at the same time they were clearly identifiable as Jews—although they were perceived to be Jewish in very different ways. Kaufman investigates these celebrities’ rise to fame, the specific brand of Jewishness each one represented, and how their fans and the public at large perceived their ethnic identity as Jews. Situating Koufax, Bruce, Dylan, and Streisand within the larger history of American Jewish celebrity, Kaufman argues that the four early 1960s figures represent a turning point between celebrity Jews of the past—such as Hank Greenberg, Groucho Marx, Irving Berlin, and Fanny Brice—and those of the present, such as Jon Stewart, Matisyahu, and Natalie Portman. Providing an entry into Jewish celebrity studies, this lively narrative explores the intersection between popular celebrity and Jewish identity and thereby examines the cultural construction of Jewishness in the latter half of the twentieth century.

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Jewish Mad Men

Advertising and the Design of the American Jewish Experience

Steinberg, Kerri P

Rutgers University Press, 2015

It is easy to dismiss advertising as simply the background chatter of modern life, often annoying, sometimes hilarious, and ultimately meaningless. But Kerri P. Steinberg argues that a careful study of the history of advertising can reveal a wealth of insight into a culture. In Jewish Mad Men, Steinberg looks specifically at how advertising helped shape the evolution of American Jewish life and culture over the past one hundred years.

Drawing on case studies of famous advertising campaigns—from Levy’s Rye Bread (“You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s”) to Hebrew National hot dogs (“We answer to a higher authority”)—Steinberg examines advertisements from the late nineteenth-century in New York, the center of advertising in the United States, to trace changes in Jewish life there and across the entire country. She looks at ads aimed at the immigrant population, at suburbanites in midcentury, and at hipster and post-denominational Jews today.

In addition to discussing campaigns for everything from Manischewitz wine to matzoh, Jewish Mad Men also portrays the legendary Jewish figures in advertising—like Albert Lasker and Bill Bernbach—and lesser known “Mad Men” like Joseph Jacobs, whose pioneering agency created the brilliantly successful Maxwell House Coffee Haggadah. Throughout, Steinberg uses the lens of advertising to illuminate the Jewish trajectory from outsider to insider, and the related arc of immigration, acculturation, upward mobility, and suburbanization.

Anchored in the illustrations, photographs, jingles, and taglines of advertising, Jewish Mad Men features a dozen color advertisements and many black-and-white images. Lively and insightful, this book offers a unique look at both advertising and Jewish life in the United States.

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Jewish in America

Sara Blair and Jonathan Freedman, Editors

University of Michigan Press, 2004

"Jewish culture in America is creating a genuinely new archive---a powerful admixture of texts old and new, Jewish and gentile, sacred and secular, on which our writers and critics offer creative commentary and to which they make compelling response. Shaped in the American crucible of race and ethnicity, pushed and pulled by the American traditions of ahistorical and individualist thinking, empowered by a powerful sacramental and hermeneutic tradition yet challenged by that tradition's stunning variety of inflections, impelled to furious response by world crisis, these writers testify not only to the anguishing and joyous complexity of being Jewish in America, but the creative energies such multiplicity generates."
-From the Introduction

This rare and original work of cultural studies offers uncommon and engaging perspectives-as well as provocative and humorous insights-on what it means to be Jewish in America.

Jewish in America features poetry, art, essays, and stories from an impressive and respected list of contributors, including among others Stephen Greenblatt, Richard Kostelanetz, Jacqueline Osherow, Robert Pinsky, Sharon Pomerantz, Nancy Reisman, Grace Schulman, Louis Simpson, Alisa Solomon, and Stephen J. Whitfield.

In addition to pieces by some of the country's leading writers, the book features a stunning gallery of original photographs that transport the viewer from the crowded Coney Island beaches of the 1940s to the landscapes of Oaxaca, Mexico in the 1990s.

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Jews in Nevada

A History

John P. Marschall

University of Nevada Press, 2011

Jews have always been one of Nevada’s most active and influential ethnic minorities. They were among the state’s earliest Euro-American settlers, and from the beginning they have been involved in every area of the state’s life as businessmen, agrarians, scholars, educators, artists, politicians, and civic, professional, and religious leaders. Jews in Nevada is an engaging, multilayered chronicle of their lives and contributions to the state. Here are absorbing accounts of individuals and families who helped to settle and develop the state, as well as thoughtful analyses of larger issues, such as the reasons Jews came to Nevada in the first place, how they created homes and interacted with non-Jews, and how they preserved their religious and cultural traditions as a small minority in a sparsely populated region.

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Jews, Germans, Memory

Reconstructions of Jewish Life in Germany

Y. Michal Bodemann, Editor

University of Michigan Press, 1996

How was it possible that a new and sizeable Jewish community developed after the Holocaust in Germany of all places? Jews, Germans, Memory undertakes to assess the past, present, and future of German-Jewish relations in the light of recent political changes and the opening up of historical resources. This welcome new volume investigates how the groundwork was laid for the new Jewish community in the post-war period, with different objectives by Jewish leaders and German politicians. Its contributors touch upon history, literature, the media, ethnicity, politics, and social movements, and attempt to answer the question of how Jews are socially constructed and how the glorious German Jewish past and the Holocaust have been remembered in the course of recent decades. In recent years, German Jewry has seen fundamental transformations with the influx from Eastern Europe and a new leadership in the community. A new self-definition, even self-assurance and reappraisal in Israel and elsewhere, has evolved. Historians, scholars of cultural studies, and those interested in debates on memory and ethnicity will all find something of interest in this diverse volume. Jews, Germans, Memory joins in debate Michael Brenner, Micha Brumlik, Dan Diner, Cilly Kugelmann, and Martin Löw-Beer, among the most prominent younger Jewish intellectuals in Germany today, with others who have long observed Germany from both inside and outside: Y. Michal Bodemann, John Borneman, Andrei Markovits, Robin Ostrow, Moishe Postone, Frank Stern, and Jack Zipes. Y. Michal Bodemann is Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto.

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John Dickson Carr

A Critical Study

S. T. Joshi

University of Wisconsin Press, 1990

John Dickson Carr is known as the master of the “locked-room” mystery—the “impossible crime.” But Carr also wrote short stories, radio plays, essays, introductions, and book reviews. S. T. Joshi has written the first full-length study of Carr’s entire work and pays particular attention to this author’s three best-known detectives: Henri Bencolin, Dr. Gideon Fell, and Sir Henry Merrivale.

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John Williams's Film Music

Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the Return of the Classical Hollywood Music Style

Emilio Audissino

University of Wisconsin Press, 2014

John Williams is one of the most renowned film composers in history. He has penned unforgettable scores for Star Wars, the Indiana Jones series, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jaws, Superman, and countless other films. Fans flock to his many concerts, and with forty-nine Academy Award nominations as of 2014, he is the second-most Oscar-nominated person after Walt Disney. Yet despite such critical acclaim and prestige, this is the first book in English on Williams’s work and career.
Combining accessible writing with thorough scholarship, and rigorous historical accounts with insightful readings, John Williams’s Film Music explores why Williams is so important to the history of film music. Beginning with an overview of music from Hollywood’s Golden Age (1933–58), Emilio Audissino traces the turning points of Williams’s career and articulates how he revived the classical Hollywood musical style. This book charts each landmark of this musical restoration, with special attention to the scores for Jaws and Star Wars, Williams’s work as conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, and a full film/music analysis of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The result is a precise, enlightening definition of Williams’s “neoclassicism” and a grounded demonstration of his lasting importance, for both his compositions and his historical role in restoring part of the Hollywood tradition.

Best Special Interest Books, selected by the American Association of School Librarians

Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Reviewers

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Johnny Cash International

How and Why Fans Love the Man in Black

Michael Hinds and Jonathan Silverman

University of Iowa Press, 2020

2023 Peggy O'Brien Book Prize, winner

Across all imaginable borders, Johnny Cash fans show the appeal of a thoroughly American performer who simultaneously inspires people worldwide. A young Norwegian shows off his Johnny Cash tattoo. A Canadian vlogger sings “I Walk the Line” to camel herders in Egypt’s White Desert. A shopkeeper in Northern Ireland plays Cash as his constant soundtrack. A Dutchwoman coordinates the activities of Cash fans worldwide and is subsequently offered the privilege of sleeping in Johnny’s bedroom. And on a more global scale, millions of people watch Cash’s videos online, then express themselves through commentary and debate.

In Johnny Cash International, Hinds and Silverman examine digital and real-world fan communities and the individuals who comprise them, profiling their relationships to Cash and each other. Studying Johnny Cash’s international fans and their love for the man reveals new insights about music, fandom, and the United States.

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Joinings and Disjoinings

The Significance of Marital Status in Literature

JoAnna Stephens Mink

University of Wisconsin Press, 1991

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.

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Joy to the World

The Performance of Collective Pleasure

Gary Alan Fine

University of Chicago Press, 2026

A celebration and exploration of the idea of pleasure and the unique role it serves in bringing individuals and communities together.

There are innumerable ways to take pleasure in life: a bite of cake in the late afternoon, a walk in the warm springtime air after a long winter, a listen to the opening chords of your favorite song. But each of these pleasures is transformed by the presence of others. In Joy to the World, sociologist Gary Alan Fine takes up one of the major themes of his lifetime of work: pleasure. Fine gives us the conceptual basis for a sociology of pleasure: a joyous view of the world that, at times, inspires us, through expectations of interaction, shared cultures, and routine practices that make life worth living in community.

Fine focuses on the impact of group relations as the platform for satisfaction, emphasizing the power of communities of practice. While pleasures may be enjoyed alone, the pleasure that occurs in social spaces performs a unique function in our personal and social lives; they help us understand ourselves as individuals who are part of a group. What is pleasurably transgressive in one context might seem inappropriate, cruel, or just plain nonsensical in another, and these shades of difference serve to solidify the bonds of the group.

Joy to the World urges us to understand what draws us together as well as to appreciate what drives us apart. Our joys, as well as our challenges, help us to be a part of a caring, conscientious, committed community.

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Jump for Joy

Jazz, Basketball, and Black Culture in 1930s America

Gena Caponi-Tabery

University of Massachusetts Press, 2008

If the 1930s was the Swing Era, then the years from 1937 on might well be called the Jump Era. That summer Count Basie recorded “Jumping at the Woodside,” and suddenly jump tunes seemed to be everywhere. Along with the bouncy beat came a new dance step—the high-flying aerials of the jitterbuggers—and the basketball games that took place in the dance halls of African America became faster, higher, and flashier. Duke Ellington and a cast of hundreds put the buoyant spirit of the era on stage with their 1941 musical revue, Jump for Joy, a title that captured the momentum and direction of the new culture of exuberance.

Several high-profile public victories accompanied this increasing optimism: the spectacular successes of African American athletes at the 1936 Olympics, the 1937 union victory of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and Joe Louis's 1937 and 1938 heavyweight championship fights. For the first time in history, Black Americans emerged as cultural heroes and ambassadors, and many felt a new pride in citizenship.

In this book, Gena Caponi-Tabery chronicles these triumphs and shows how they shaped American music, sports, and dance of the 1930s and beyond. But she also shows how they emboldened ordinary African Americans to push for greater recognition and civil liberties—how cultural change preceded and catalyzed political action.

Tracing the path of one symbolic gesture—the jump—across cultural and disciplinary boundaries, Caponi-Tabery provides a unique political, intellectual, and artistic analysis of the years immediately preceding World War II.

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Junk Drawer

What We Leave Behind

Sander Gilman

University of Delaware Press, 2026

Junk Drawer: What We Leave Behind explores the personal objects that were once treasured by their owners yet were ultimately consigned to online “junk drawer” sales. Photographer and coeditor Barbara Von Eckardt acquired these random assortments from estate remnants on eBay and has documented their contents through evocative, sepia-toned images. In doing so, she has breathed new life into items that the world had deemed valueless, but that hint at the stories and identities of those who once owned them.

In addition to the photographs, Von Eckardt and coeditor Sander L. Gilman have gathered essays by scholars across disciplines, each offering a unique perspective on how such everyday objects can carry profound meaning. The result is a “junk drawer” of reflections, as varied and thought-provoking as the artifacts themselves. It is a moving testament to the emotional and cultural resonance of ordinary things—and an invitation to look more deeply at the objects surrounding us.

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