Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Half-title -- Copyright -- Title -- Contents -- The Editor to the Reader -- The Photographic Blind as a Technology of Animal Representation -- Live animals in nature as a photographic problem -- The hunting blind -- Adapting the photographic blind -- The Wallihans and the unremarked photographic blind -- The Keartons and the adaptation of the blind -- Francis Herrick and the observational blind -- Frank Michler Chapman and the formalization of the photographic blind -- The photographic blind and the development of animal photography -- The photographic blind as an abstract machine -- The photographic blind, photographic invisibility and the animal gaze -- As Matthew Calarco explains -- Animal photography and photographic invisibility -- Conclusion: The naturalization of the photographic blind -- Endnotes -- On Exactitude in Science -- Endnotes -- Field Test Report: The Blind in the Field -- BackCover

When it comes to food as a cultural entity, its importance as part of our communities of interaction goes well beyond its function as mere physical nourishment. It seems virtually impossible to talk about food and memory without talking about taste and smell. The connection between food, memory and the senses relies on the understanding that particular elements of the past are embedded in our identities and sense of self. Closely related to their food counterparts, drinks have also been at the centre of ongoing scholarly attention. Wine, in particular, has been the focus of debates surrounding notions of taste, provenance, storytelling, branding, habit and memory. As far as both food and drink are concerned, however, the remembrance of the senses – and the sociocultural experiences connected to them – is often shrouded in a layer of nostalgia, which inevitably complicates how we perceive experiences, as either authentic or (re-)constructed. Taking this idea as a point of departure, this article focuses on the connections between the sensorial experience of food and drink and the construction of memories in Joanne Harris's novel Blackberry Wine (). Specifically, the article explores how Harris portrays the experience of wine-drinking – with a focus on taste, smell and the notion of terroir – as interdependent upon both cultural knowledge and familiar sensorial experiences. The discussion also exposes how these are eventually tacitly (and perhaps inadvertently) connected in the novel to the problem of consumerist exploitation, and how nostalgia is channelled in order to render products desirable to prospective customers.

Abstract
As both a cultural and an aesthetic entity, the mirror functions as a site of transformation, intermingling, and (un)clarity. Even at the most embryonic level, the mirror is connected to the framework of the Gothic via the notion of the 'double', the terrifying Other that lingers in the margins of our consciousness, and challenges our cultural certainties. In the reflection, the familiar becomes unfamiliar, the known becomes unknown, the certain merges with the uncertain. Taking this in-between status as a point of departure, this article offers a preliminary analysis of the role played by the mirror in contemporary Gothic horror film. Focusing particularly on The Skeleton Key (Softley, 2005) as an evocative example, I uncover how the mirror is intertwined with narratives of magic and mysticism. My discussion shows how scary and often supernatural encounters with mirrors are inevitably entangled with matters of a cultural nature, where the blurred and intangible margins of Gothicized reflections channel contemporary preoccupations surrounding ethnicity, spirituality, identity and haunted histories.

This article considers the function of food and consumption in Katherine Mansfield's fiction. Using food as the ideal medium to dissect issues of gender, national identity and class, Mansfield unveils how eating functions as an agent of modernity. Against the backdrop of World War One
– and the subsequent evolution into the 1920s – Mansfield reveals how history and popular culture merge in the idiom of food. Her fiction proves eating to be an activity of 'conflict', whether it be conceptually saturated with political militancy or marked by social divergence
and disarming solitude. While Mansfield's New Zealand stories offer an optimistic perspective on gastronomy and life sanguinity, her European fiction offers a bleaker view of eating as an activity that emphasizes the pain of post-war separation, solitude and social neglect. By paying close
attention to the gastro-political debates in the fiction, this analysis aims to show how food habits act as a crucial concept within Mansfield's negotiations of a particularly alienating moment in history.

In recent years, food has become a recurrent part of popular culture. Occupying a privileged space between necessity and luxury, food features in numerous popular media, ranging from television shows to metaphorical uses of 'hunger' in cinematographic adaptations of the latest vampire
phenomena. Food acts not only as a cultural projection of social, ethnic and national affiliation but also bridges the gap between cultural tendencies, mainstream preferences and consumerist desires. Taking eating's popularized status as a point of departure, this article analyses the multiple
representations of food and hunger in Matt Groening's Futurama. Focusing on specific examples from the series, I discuss how, through images of food, Futurama offers parodied critiques of late twentieth- and twenty-first-century commercial and cultural trends. I aim to show that, while hinting
at connections to popular history, Futurama's improbable foods pluralize the political, intellectual and aesthetic colonization of everyday life by brands, media and product.

Introduction: living Gothic / Lorna Piatti-Farnell and Maria Beville -- Uncanny histories. Trauma, Gothic, revolution / David Punter -- Uncanny communities: empire and its others / Kristy Butler -- Gothic memory and the contested past: framing terror / Maria Beville -- The abhuman city: Peter Ackroyd's Gothic historiography of London / Ashleigh Prosser -- Legends, folklore, and tradition. Spectral pumpkins: cultural icons and the Gothic everyday / Lorna Piatti-Farnell -- The doll's uncanny soul / Susan Yi Sencidiver -- Ghosting the nation: La llorona, popular culture, and the spectral anxiety of Mexican identity / Enrique Ajuria Ibarra -- A dark domesticity: echoes of folklore in Irish contemporary Gothic / Tracy Fahey -- Gothic "remains". Architecture and the romance of Gothic remains: John Carter and the gentleman's magazine, 1797-1817 / Dale Townshend -- Morbid dining: writing the haunted history of last meals / Donna Lee Brien -- Gothic remains in South Asian English fiction / Tabish Khair -- Haunting and the (im)possibility of Maori Gothic / Misha Avka

This Special Issue re-examines the part played by superheroes in contemporary narratives within popular culture. In so doing, it explores how these iconic figures reflect identities and meaning in social, cultural, political and historical contexts.

Abstract

In this editorial, the editors introduce the 12.2 volume of The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture. The dynamic and interdisciplinary nature of the field is discussed with reference to the collection of articles within the volume, highlighting the malleability of popular culture in all its transdisciplinary forms. The editors provide a summary of the seven articles included in the volume, which collectively represent diverse critical discussions of the field across sociopolitical, socioeconomic and sociocultural artistic realms. The articles examine the evolving realms of the monstrous, the mythic, the heroic and the historical through various mediums like television, film, characters and historical moments. The editors then conclude by offering a summary of the three book reviews included in the volume.

In our twenty-first century context, we tell stories through the foods we eat, the images we share, the people we follow on social media, the shows we watch and the music we listen to. From film to television, from Twitter accounts to the latest fandom trend, popular culture provides us with channels through which our narratives of everyday can transform from immaterial notions to very material and tangible objects of consumption. At the centre of our ways of storytelling lies the formation of our identities. This editorial introduces a Special Issue of the Australasian Journal of Popular Culture that is focused on exploring the many complex intersections between storytelling, identity and popular culture.

Abstract

Whether preparing us for economic recovery after the zombie apocalypse, analyzing vampire investment strategies, or illuminating the market forces that affect vampire-human romances, Economics of the Undead: Zombies, Vampires, and the Dismal Science gives both seasoned economists and layman readers something to sink their teeth into.