Titles of Interest – It Happens at Comic-Con: Ethnographic Essays on a Pop Culture Phenomenon
It Happens at Comic-Con: Ethnographic Essays on a Pop Culture Phenomenon (McFarland, 2014), edited by Ben Bolling and Matthew J. Smith This collection of 13 new essays employs ethnographic methods to investigate San Diego’s Comic-Con International, the largest annual celebration of the popular arts in North America. Working from a common grounding in fan studies, […]
Titles of Interest – Body, Soul and Cyberspace in Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema
I am on my way back home from a symposium at Baylor University in Waco, Texas on faith and film. I enjoyed many of the presentations and sessions, including one on science fiction. One of the presenters was Sylvie Magerstädt, Senior Lecturer in Media Cultures at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. She presented a paper […]
Titles of Interest – Devoted to Death: Santa Muerta, the Skeleton Saint
Devoted to Death: Santa Muerta, the Skelton Saint by R. Andrew Chesnut (Oxford University Press, 2012) R. Andrew Chesnut offers a fascinating portrayal of Santa Muerte, a skeleton saint whose cult has attracted millions of devotees over the past decade. Although condemned by mainstream churches, this folk saint’s supernatural powers appeal to millions of Latin […]
Titles of Interest – Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds
Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds (University of California Press, 2015), by Joseph P. Laycock. The 1980s saw the peak of a moral panic over fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. Before you read the rest of this article, you might want to […]
Titles of Interest – “Guillermo del Toro: Film as Alchemic Art”
Guillermo del Toro: Film as Alchemic Art, Keith McDonald and Roger Clark (Bloomsbury, 2014) A critical exploration of one of the most exciting, original and influential figures to emerge in contemporary film, Guillermo del Toro: Film as Alchemic Art is a major contribution to the analysis of Guillermo del Toro’s cinematic output. It offers an […]
Titles of Interest – “The Vampire in Science Fiction Film and Literature”
Paul Meehan is a friend of TheoFantastique who has been interviewed and contributed guest essays here previously. I am currently reading his latest book for a review in the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. The book is The Vampire in Science Fiction Film and Literature (McFarland, 2014). Vampires have been a popular subject […]
Titles of Interest – Virtually Sacred: Myth and Meaning in World of Warcraft and Second Life
Virtually Sacred: Myth and Meaning in World of Warcraft and Second Life by Robert M. Geraci (Oxford University Press, 2014). Millions of users have taken up residence in virtual worlds, and in those worlds they find opportunities to revisit and rewrite their religious lives. Robert M. Geraci argues that virtual worlds and video games have […]
Title of Interest – “Zombies and Sexuality: Essays on Desire and the Walking Dead”
Zombies and Sexuality: Essays on Desire and the Walking Dead, edited by Shaka McGlotten and Steve Jones (McFarland, 2014) Since the early 2000s, zombies have increasingly swarmed the landscape of popular culture, with ever more diverse representations of the undead being imagined. A growing number of zombie narratives have introduced sexual themes, endowing the living […]
Title of Interest – “Japanese and American Horror: A Comparative Study of Film, Graphic Novels, and Video Games”
Japanese and American Horror: A Comparative Study of Film, Graphic Novels, and Video Games by Katarzyna Marak (McFarland, 2014) Horror fiction is an important part of the popular culture in many modern societies. This book compares and contrasts horror narratives from two distinct cultures–American and Japanese–with a focus on the characteristic mechanisms that make them […]
Title of Interest – “Miyazaki’s Animism Abroad: The Reception of Japanese Religious Themes by American and German Audiences””
Animism Abroad: The Reception of Japanese Religious Themes by American and German Audiences by Eriko Ogihara-Schuck (McFarland, 2014) After winning an Oscar for Spirited Away, the Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki’s animated films were dubbed into many languages. Some of the films are saturated with religious themes distinctive to Japanese culture. How were these themes, or […]
