Popular beliefs and controversial knowledge

The heroine's journey echoes throughout ancient legend.

In 2013, the Nobel Prize for Literature was for the first time awarded to a short story writer, and to a Canadian, Alice Munro.

A literary genre that pervades 21st-century popular culture, science fiction creates mythologies that make statements about humanity's place in the universe and embody an intersection of science, religion and philosophy.

From novels to films, our everyday lives are filled with stories that comfort and connect us and enable new ways of thinking.

The Druids and the Arthurian legends are all most of us know about early Britain, from the Neolithic to the Iron Age (4500 BC-AD 43).

Many female figures in recent fiction, film, and television embody the Artemis archetype, modeled on the Greco-Roman goddess of the hunt.

Of all the anomalous phenomenon reported, ghost sightings are by far the most common.

Every culture has in its folklore and mythology beings of immense size and strength, as well as other preternatural humanoids great or small who walk among us, serving the divine or fulfilling their own agendas.

This new English translation of the Faroe-Islander Saga (Faereyinga saga)--a great medieval Icelandic saga--tells the story of the first settlers on these wind-swept islands at the edge of the Scandinavian world.

The history of the execution of women in the United States has largely been ignored and scholars have given scant attention to gender issues in capital punishment.

"e;Here there be dragons"e;--this notation was often made on ancient maps to indicate the edges of the known world and what lay beyond.

Winifred Black worked in journalism from 1888 to 1936, often writing under the pseudonym Annie Laurie.

Why did it seem strange when Battlestar Galactica ended its narrative on a religious note instead of providing a scientific explanation?

Erotic texts written by and for women play a significant role in negotiating relations of gender, sexuality and kinship, and in shaping popular ideas about romance and the erotic.

This series of absorbing case studies focuses on the portrayal of Pakistani women in the global media.

The Bulloch women of Roswell, Georgia, were not typical antebellum Southern belles.

The Golden Girls, Designing Women, Living Single, Sex and the City, Girlfriends, Cashmere Mafia and Hot in Cleveland stand out as some of America's favorite television series.

Between 1887 and 1920, the humble hatpin went from an unremarkable item in every woman's wardrobe, to a fashion necessity, to a dangerous weapon (it was said).

This examination of myths from around the world focuses on the role nature plays within mythology.

From the first woman Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Bertha von Suttner (1905), to the latest and youngest female Nobel laureate, Malala Yousafzai (2014), this book in its second edition provides a detailed look at the lives and accomplishments of each of these sixteen Prize winners.

The 1950s era of science fiction film effectively ended when space flight became a reality with the first manned orbit of Earth in 1962.

Christianity faces a dilemma with regard to the status of women.

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According to sociologist C.

Outlander is much more than a television romance about a World War II nurse and a Jacobite soldier in a fetching kilt.

At the turn of the millennium, narrative works by Latin American women writers have represented madness within contexts of sociopolitical strife and gender inequality.

Audiences for musical theater are predominantly women, yet shows are frequently created and produced by men.

This book studies the treatment of science and technology from ancient myths to current works, demonstrating the importance of science to human civilization as evidenced in literature.

The anguish endured by agunot (chained) Orthodox Jewish women trapped in unhappy or defunct marriages by husbands who refuse to give them a gett (divorce) reveals the power of religious law even when it conflicts with modern societies' moral and legal norms.

As early as 1760 and as late as 1920, Romantic drama dominated Peninsular Spanish theater.

Taking stock of Yiddish literature in 1939, critic Shmuel Niger highlighted the increasing number and importance of women writers.

Early 20th century non-commercial theaters emerged as hubs of social transformation on both sides of the Atlantic.

When women picketed the White House demanding the vote on January 10, 1917, they broke new ground in political activism.

The Big Bang Theory's mix of humor, nerdy protagonists, sexy female leads and quirky characters have made the series one of CBS's most successful shows and have brought it international acclaim.

Written with the cooperation of President Jimmy Carter and his family, this book provides an intimate glimpse inside the life of the woman who--as nurse, mother and social justice activist in segregated southwest Georgia--made a lifelong habit of breaking the rules defining a woman's place in and out of the home and the status of blacks in society.

Focusing on Egypt during the period 1760 to 1870, this book fills in some of the historical blanks for a dance form often known today in the Middle East as raqs sharki or raqs baladi, and in Western countries as "e;belly dance.

Retelling 30 myths and legends of the Eastern Cherokee, this book presents the stories with important details providing a culturally authentic and historically accurate context.

At the 2013 "e;Celebrating The Hobbit"e; conference at Valparaiso University--marking the 75th anniversary of the book's publication and the first installment of Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies--two plenary papers were presented: "e;Anchoring the Myth: The Impact of The Hobbit on Tolkien's Legendarium"e; by John D.

Expand your bird knowledge with this gorgeous encyclopedia of nearly 400 bird species around the world, unique for its inclusion of both their physical and mythological characteristics.

The story of Jason and the Argonauts is one of the most famous in Greek myth, and its development from the oldest layers of Greek mythology down to the modern age encapsulates the dramatic changes in faith, power and culture that Western civilization has seen over the past three millennia.

Game of Thrones, one of the hottest series on television, leaves hundreds of critics divided on how "e;feminist"e; the show really is.

This new biography provides a startlingly different picture of Mary Lincoln, President Abraham Lincoln's wife.

It's called consciousness-raising (CR).

This exploration of the ways in which pregnancy affects narrative begins with two canonical American texts, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1848) and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861).

This book examines the history of sexual harassment in America's public places, such as on the streets and on public transit vehicles, in the period 1880 to 1930.

While John Ford (1894-1973) remains one of the most influential and revered directors in film history, he is also one of the most frequently misunderstood.

Ubiquitous and enduring, myths are an inherent part of culture.

A marriage of mystery fiction and queer concerns, queer crime literature celebrates the pairing of the political and the sexual.

This book explores how contemporary fantastic fiction by women writers responds to the past and imagines the future.

This book explores common representations and experiences of American fitness.