Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers

Among the top-grossing Hollywood blockbusters of all time, Star Wars launched one of the most successful movie and licensing franchises in history.

The late 1960s and early 1970s saw the birth of modern feminism, the sexual revolution, and strong growth in the mass-market publishing industry.

Ajax, the archetypal Greek warrior, has over the years been trivialized as a peripheral character in the classics through Hollywood representations, and by the use of his name on household cleaning products.

The birth of modern fantasy in 1930s Britain and America saw the development of new literary and film genres.

Speculative science fiction, with its underlying socio-political dialogue, represents an important intersection of popular culture and public discourse.

Marxist theories have had a profound influence on crime fiction, beginning with the works of the American writers of the 1930s.

Outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare, the works of Agatha Christie stand as some of the most celebrated crime fiction of our era.

The debut of Saturday Night Live and the 1976 presidential election between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter had enduring effects on American culture.

The work of J.

First introduced in a 1938 comic book, Superman has since become an iconic character in American entertainment.

We live in an information economy, a vast archive of data ever at our fingertips.

Some critics rank biographers just above serial murderers.

Beloved by young girls around the world, Hasbro's My Little Pony franchise has been mired in controversy since its debut in the early 1980s.

The hard-boiled style of detective fiction emerged in America in the years after the First World War.

Horror fiction is an important part of the popular culture in many modern societies.

The heroine's journey echoes throughout ancient legend.

George R.

Can blockbuster films be socially relevant or are they just escapist diversions to entertain the masses and enrich the studios?

Prolific, popular and critically acclaimed, Michael Moorcock is the most important British fantasy author of his generation.

Marvel Comics has an established tradition of addressing relevant real-life issues facing the American public.

The self-proclaimed "e;Hottest Band in the World,"e; KISS is one of the most popular groups in the history of rock, having sold more than 100 million albums during their more than 40-year reign.

This book focuses on the distinctive role that artists have played in detective fiction--as detectives, as villains and victims, and as bystanders.

Historically, zombies have been portrayed in films and television series as mindless, shuffling monsters.

We follow celebrities on Twitter and Facebook, watch them on television, and read about them in supermarket checkout lines.

In recent decades, science fiction in both print and visual media has produced an outpouring of story lines that feature forms of simulated reality.

The Lord of the Rings rarely makes an appearance in college courses that aim to examine modern British and American literature.

What comes to mind when you think about superheroes?

With the 1965 publication of In Cold Blood, Truman Capote declared he broke new literary ground.

The Harry Potter phenomenon created a surge in reading with a lasting effect on all areas of culture, especially education.

Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend has spawned a series of iconic horror and science fiction films, including The Last Man on Earth (1964), The Omega Man (1971) and I Am Legend (2007).

Charles Fort was an American researcher from the early twentieth century who cataloged reports of unexplained phenomena he found in newspapers and science journals.

This companion to Frank Herbert's six original Dune novels--Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune--provides an encyclopedia of characters, locations, terms and other elements, and highlights the series' underrated aesthetic integrity.

Disc jockey Alan Freed coined the term "e;rock and roll"e; in the 1950s.

Exploring the pedagogical power of the monstrous, this collection of new essays describes innovative teaching strategies that use our cultural fascination with monsters to enhance learning in high school and college courses.

Just over 200 years ago on a stormy night, a young woman conceived of what would become one of the most iconic images of science gone wrong, the story of Victor Frankenstein and his Creature.

Best known for her Kate Delafield detective series, Katherine V.

Superman is the original superhero, an American icon, and arguably the most famous character in the world--and he's Jewish!

What is behind Outlander fever--the hit television drama's popularity?

This collection of new essays seeks to define the unique qualities of female heroism in literary fantasy from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings in the 1950s through the present.

Speculative modernists--that is, British and American writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror during the late 19th and early 20th centuries--successfully grappled with the same forces that would drive their better-known literary counterparts to existential despair.

The 2005 James McTeigue and Wachowski Brothers film V for Vendetta represents a postmodern pastiche, a collection of fragments pasted together from the original Moore and Lloyd graphic novel of the same name, along with numerous allusions to literature, history, cinema, music, art, politics, and medicine.

Winston Churchill, indispensable when liberty was in peril, died in 1965.

Australian crime fiction has grown from the country's origins as an 18th-century English prison colony.

Since the emergence of digital game studies, a number of debates have engaged scholars.

From 1985 to 1995, Mark Gruenwald was the head writer for Captain America.

Although fantasy and supernatural literature have long and celebrated histories, many critics contend that the fantastic and the supernatural have no place in the logical, rational, world of the detective story.

This is a critical study of the great British man of letters G.

Since her first appearance in 1992, Harley Quinn--eccentric sidekick to the Joker--has captured the attention of readers like few new characters have in eight decades of Batman comics.

American moviegoers have long turned to the Hollywood Western for reassurance in times of crisis.

Hugo Award winning writer James Gunn (1923-2020) has been called "e;the last Golden Age author"e; of science fiction.