Readings in Law and Popular Culture


Book Description

Readings in Law and Popular Culture is the first book to bring together high quality research, with an emphasis on context, from key researchers working at the cutting-edge of both law and cultural disciplines. Fascinating and varied, the volume crosses many boundaries, dealing with areas as diverse as football-based computer games, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, digital sampling in the music industry, the films of Sidney Lumet, football hooliganism, and Enid Blyton. These topics are linked together through the key thread of the role of, or the absence of, law - therefore providing a snapshot of significant work in the burgeoning field of law and popular culture. Including important theoretical and truly innovative, relevant material, this contemporary text will enliven and inform a legal audience, and will also appeal to a much broader readership of people interested in this highly topical area.




When Law Goes Pop


Book Description

"When Law Goes Pop" is an examination of legal practice in today's world, one that should be needed by everyone concerned with the future of our legal system and the meaning we invest in it.




Lex Populi


Book Description

This is a book about jurisprudence—or legal philosophy. The legal philosophical texts under consideration are—to say the least—unorthodox. Tolkien, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, Million Dollar Baby, and other cultural products are all referenced as exemplary instances of what the author calls lex populi—“people’s” or “pop law.” There, more than anywhere else, will one find the leading issues of legal philosophy. These issues, however, are heavily coded, for few of these pop cultural texts announce themselves as expressly legal. Nonetheless, Lex Populi reads these texts “jurisprudentially,” that is, with an eye to their hidden legal philosophical meanings, enabling connections such as: Tolkien’s Ring as Kelsen’s grundnorm; vampire slaying as legal language’s semiosis; Hogwarts as substantively unjust; and a seriously injured young woman as termination’s rights-bearer. In so doing, Lex Populi attempts not only a jurisprudential reading of popular culture, but a popular rereading of jurisprudence, removing it from the legal experts in order to restore it to the public at large: a lex populi by and for the people.




Law and Popular Culture


Book Description

Commentators have noted the extraordinary impact of popular culture on legal practice, courtroom proceedings, police departments, and government as a whole, and it is no exaggeration to say that most people derive their basic understanding of law from cultural products. Movies, television programs, fiction, children’s literature, online games, and the mass media typically influence attitudes and impressions regarding law and legal institutions more than law and legal institutions themselves. Law and Popular Culture: International Perspectives enhances the appreciation of the interaction between popular culture and law by underscoring this interaction’s multinational and international features. Two dozen authors from nine countries invite readers to consider the role of law-related popular culture in a broad range of nations, socio-political contexts, and educational environments. Even more importantly, selected contributors explore the global transmission and reception of law-related cultural products and, in particular, the influence of assorted works and media across national borders and cultural boundaries. The circulation and consumption of law-related popular culture are increasing as channels of mass media become more complex and as globalization runs its uncertain course. Law and Popular Culture: International Perspectives adds to the critical understanding of the worldwide interaction of popular culture and law and encourages reflection on the wider implications of this mutual influence across both time and geography.




Pop Culture for Beginners


Book Description

Pop Culture for Beginners promotes reflective engagement with the world around us and provides a set of tools for thinking critically about how meaning is created, reinforced, and circulated. Privileging a semiotic approach, the book’s first part, “The Pop Culture Toolbox,” outlines the development of pop culture studies; explains the semiotic framework; introduces students to a variety of critical lenses including Marxism, feminism, postcolonialism, and Critical Race Theory; and then offers an overview of several pop culture “pivot points” including authenticity, convergence culture, intersectionality, intertextuality, and subculture. The book’s second part provides a series of units, prepared in consultation with subject area experts, built around topics central to popular culture studies: television and film, music, comics, gaming, social media, and fandom. Each chapter includes “Your Turn” activities and discussion questions, as well as possible assignments and suggestions for further reading. The unit chapters in part two also include enabling questions as beginning points for thinking critically and sample readings demonstrating relevant scholarly approaches to popular culture; important vocabulary terms throughout are included in a substantive glossary at the end.




Romancing the Tomes


Book Description

With contributions by scholars from the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, this provocative collection of essays explores the uneasy relationship between law and popular culture from a feminist perspective.




Readings in Law and Popular Culture


Book Description

Readings in Law and Popular Culture is the first book to bring together high quality research, with an emphasis on context, from key researchers working at the cutting-edge of both law and cultural disciplines. Fascinating and varied, the volume crosses many boundaries, dealing with areas as diverse as football-based computer games, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, digital sampling in the music industry, the films of Sidney Lumet, football hooliganism, and Enid Blyton. These topics are linked together through the key thread of the role of, or the absence of, law - therefore providing a snapshot of significant work in the burgeoning field of law and popular culture. Including important theoretical and truly innovative, relevant material, this contemporary text will enliven and inform a legal audience, and will also appeal to a much broader readership of people interested in this highly topical area.




Readings In Popular Culture


Book Description

This is the first book since Roland Barthes' Mythologies to take a comprehensive look at popular culture. The twenty-six essays in this volume, all written by specialists, cover a range of topics from t-shirts to computers. While each essay reflects some aspect of contemporary cultural theory, a number also develop original approaches to questions of whether popular culture is a condition or a representation of experience and how it manages to both resist and reproduce consumer capitalism. Together, these essays present an exciting reinterpretation of popular culture which will appeal to anyone interested in this important subject.




Gender & Pop Culture


Book Description

Gender & Pop Culture provides a foundation for the study of gender, pop culture and media. This comprehensive, interdisciplinary text provides text-book style introductory and concluding chapters written by the editors, seven original contributor chapters on key topics and written in a variety of writing styles, discussion questions, additional resources and more. Coverage includes: - Foundations for studying gender & pop culture (history, theory, methods, key concepts) - Contributor chapters on media and children, advertising, music, television, film, sports, and technology - Ideas for activism and putting this book to use beyond the classroom - Pedagogical Features - Suggestions for further readings on topics covered and international studies of gender and pop culture Gender & Pop Culture was designed with students in mind, to promote reflection and lively discussion. With features found in both textbooks and anthologies, this sleek book can serve as primary or supplemental reading in undergraduate courses across the disciplines that deal with gender, pop culture or media studies. “An important addition to the fields of gender and media studies, this excellent compilation will be useful to students and teachers in a wide range of disciplines. The research is solid, the examples from popular culture are current and interesting, and the conclusions are original and illuminating. It is certain to stimulate self-reflection and lively discussion.” Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D., author, feminist activist and creator of the Killing Us Softly:Advertising’s Image of Women film series “An ideal teaching tool: the introduction is intellectually robust and orients the reader towards a productive engagement with the chapters; the contributions themselves are diverse and broad in terms of the subject matter covered; and the conclusion helps students take what they have learnt beyond the classroom. I can’t wait to make use of it.” Sut Jhally, Professor of Communication, University of Massachusetts at Amherst,Founder & Executive Director, Media Education Foundation Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, Ph.D. is currently an assistant professor of sociology at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. Her first book, Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman: Female Fans and the Music of Tori Amos (Scarecrow, 2013) addresses the ways women use music to heal after experiencing trauma. www.adriennetrier-bieniek.com Patricia Leavy, Ph.D. is an internationally known scholar and best-selling author, formerly associate professor of sociology and the founding director of gender studies at Stonehill College. She is the author of the acclaimed novels American Circumstance and Low-Fat Love and has published a dozen nonfiction books including Method Meets Art: Arts-Based Research Practice. www.patricialeavy.com




Sports Law


Book Description

This textbook provides a comprehensive overview of the ways in which the law has impacted on how sport is played, administered and consumed. The author writes in a clear and engaging manner, tracing the origins and sources of this rapidly evolving subject and drawing examples from a wide range of professional and amateur sports to illustrate the important current debates and topics of interest. The book covers a wide-range of topics from participant and non-participant liability, fighting sports and their legality, and liability for stadium safety and disasters. The final section of the book takes in the very latest developments in mass-event sport and the growing but fundamental area of sports commercialisation. New to this Edition: - Fully updated and includes analyses of the Pechstein and Sharapova decisions - Includes details on the state aid rulings on financial support for Spanish and Dutch football clubs - The author includes a review of the Rio 2016 Olympics