Monographs and Edited Collections
Over the course of the REF 2021 cycle, this unit has published eight books, including three monographs and five edited collections, with publishers including Palgrave, Routledge, and Rowman and Littlefield.
Akser, M. and McCollum, V. eds., 2018. Alternative media in contemporary Turkey: Sustainability, activism, and resistance. Rowman & Littlefield.
The transformations in alternative media, journalism and social protest in contemporary Turkey have largely occurred due to the upsurge in use of social media.
Some of the most fervent users of social media in the world come from Turkey where forms of social media are frequently banned by the Turkish government.
This book looks at the structural, economic and political reasons why the current media system fails urban educated young professionals in Turkey and led them to a month long resistance and protest through the use of social media during OccupyGezi movement. The book outlines the history of alternative media use and the ways in which it has become a tool for the critics of the neoliberal economic system in Turkey.
The collection concentrates on social media use within social movements and applies interdisciplinary approaches and research methods, ranging from cinema and visual arts to sociology, political science, content analysis and ethnographic study.
Crooke, E. and Maguire, T. eds., 2018. Heritage After Conflict: Northern Ireland. Routledge.
The year 2018 marks the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the Belfast Agreement that initiated an uneasy peace in Northern Ireland after the forty years of the Troubles.
The last twenty years, however, has still not been sufficient time to satisfactorily resolve the issue of how to deal with the events of the conflict and the dissonant heritages that both gave rise to it and were, in turn, fuelled by it. With contributions from across the UK and Europe, Heritage after Conflict brings together a range of expertise to examine the work to which heritage is currently being put within Northern Ireland.
Questions about the contemporary application of remembering infiltrate every aspect of heritage studies, including built heritages, urban regeneration and planning, tourism, museum provision and intangible cultural heritages.
These represent challenges for heritage professionals, who must carefully consider how they might curate and conserve dissonant heritages without exacerbating political tensions that might spark violence.
Through a lens of critical heritage studies, contributors to this book locate their work within the wider contexts of post-conflict societies, divided cities and dissonant heritages.
Heritage after Conflict should be essential reading for academics, researchers and postgraduate students engaged in the study of the social sciences, history, peace studies, economics, cultural geography, museum heritage and cultural policy, and the creative arts. It should also be of great interest to heritage professionals.
Fitzpatrick, L. 2018. Rape on the Contemporary Stage. Palgrave.
This book investigates the representation of rape in British and Irish theatre since the second wave of the Women’s Movement.
Mainly focusing on the period from the 1990s to the present, it identifies key feminist debates on rape and gender, and introduces a set of ideas about the function of rape as a form of embodied, gendered violence to the analysis of dramaturgical and performance strategies used in a range of important and/or controversial works.
The chapters explore the dramatic representation of consent; feminist performance strategies that interrogate common attitudes to rape and rape survivors; the use of rape as an allegory for political oppression; the relationships of vulnerability, eroticism and affect in the understanding and representation of sexual violence; and recent work that engages with anti-rape activism to present women’s personal experiences on stage.
Maguire, T., 2015. Performing story on the contemporary stage. Palgrave Macmillan.
Storytelling performance is everywhere on the stage today: from the schtick of the stand-up comedian to the harrowing stories of verbatim theatre.
This is the first book to take a comparative approach to these diverse forms to address the related questions of how story worlds are created on stage and what happens when spectators experience storytelling. Tom Maguire draws on an international range of storytelling performances to identify commonalities and distinctions, with examples including work by Anna Deavere Smith, Dario Fo, Franca Rame, Bobby Baker and Billy Connolly.
He argues that storytelling performance can be characterized by the prominence of three specific factors: the degree of emphasis on narration in performance; the use of specific (epic and post-epic) modes of performance; and the immediate reciprocity of the relationship between the teller and the audience.
His case study method generates detailed discussions and draws out conclusions with widespread application.
McCollum, V. ed., 2019. Make America Hate Again: Trump-era Horror and the Politics of Fear. Routledge.
Horror films have traditionally sunk their teeth into straitened times, reflecting, expressing and validating the spirit of the epoch, and capitalising on the political and cultural climate in which they are made.
This book shows how the horror genre has adapted itself to the transformation of contemporary American politics and the mutating role of traditional and new media in the era of Donald Trump’s Presidency of the United States.
Exploring horror’s renewed potential for political engagement in a socio-political climate characterised by the angst of civil conflict, the deception of ‘alternative facts’ and the threat of nuclear or biological conflict and global warming, Make America Hate Again examines the intersection of film, politics, and American culture and society through a bold critical analysis of popular horror (films, television shows, podcasts and online parodies), such as 10 Cloverfield Lane, American Horror Story, Don’t Breathe, Get Out, Hotel Transylvania 2, Hush, It, It Comes at Night, South Park, The Babadook, The Walking Dead, The Woman, The Witch and Twin Peaks: The Return.
The first major exploration of the horror genre through the lens of the Trump era, it investigates the correlations between recent, culturally meaningful horror texts, and the broader culture within which they have become gravely significant. Offering a rejuvenating, optimistic, and positive perspective on popular culture as a site of cultural politics, Make America Hate Again will appeal to scholars and students of American studies, film and media studies, and cultural studies.
Monteverde, G and V. McCollum. 2020. Resist!: Protest Media and Popular Culture in the Brexit-Trump Era. Rowman and Littlefield.
Resist! pays close attention to popular culture; it examines the political ramifications of Kanye West's support of Donald Trump, the significance of Aaron Sorkin's language to American political discourse, and the casting of female emotion as a political force in House of Cards and The Handmaid's Tale.
In doing so, the collection traverses the formal world of 'the political' as it relates to presidential elections and referenda, while emphasising the sociocultural and political significance of popular texts which have played a critical role in exploring, critiquing and shaping culture in the twenty first century.
Popular culture is often considered trivial or irrelevant to more pressing political concerns, and celebrities are often reprimanded for their forays into the political sphere.
Resist! pays close attention to texts that are too often excluded when we think about politics, and explores the cultural and political fall-out of a reality TV president and a divisive public vote on increasingly connected global audiences.
In examining the cultural politics of popular media, this collection is inherently interdisciplinary, and the chapters utilise methods and analysis from a range of social science and humanities disciplines.
Resist! is both creative and timely, and offers a crucial examination of a fascinating and frightening political and cultural moment.
McCollum, V. (ed.) & Monteverde, G. (ed.), 2018. HBO’s Original Voices: Race, Gender, Sexuality and Power. Routledge.
This collection examines not HBO’s legacy shows, such as Sex and The City, The Sopranos and The Wire, but its current programming, bringing together an international group of media and cultural studies scholars to offer an in-depth look at issues of race, gender, sexuality and power behind HBO’s new and original voices.
A significant intervention in television studies, media studies and cultural studies, this book illuminates the emergence of a new era of culturally relevant television that fans, students, and researchers should find lively, accessible and interesting.
Series discussed in this collection include: Game of Thrones (2011+); Girls (2012-2017); Insecure (2016+); Looking (2014-2015); The Comeback (2005, 2014); The Leftovers (2014-2017); True Detective (2014-2015); Silicon Valley (2014+); Veep (2012+); and Vinyl (2016).
McCollum, V., 2016. Post-9/11 Heartland Horror: Rural horror films in an era of urban terrorism. Routledge.
This book explores the resurgence of rural horror following the events of 9/11, as a number of filmmakers, inspired by the films of the 1970s, moved away from the characteristic industrial and urban settings of apocalyptic horror, to return to American heartland horror. Examining the revival of rural horror in an era of city fear and urban terrorism, the author analyses the relationship of the genre with fears surrounding the Global War on Terror, exploring the films’ engagement with the political repercussions of 9/11 and the ways in which traces of traumatic events leave their mark on cultures.
Arranged around the themes of dissent, patriotism, myth, anger and memorial, and with attention to both text and socio-cultural context in its interpretation of the films’ themes, Post-9/11 Heartland Horror offers a series of case studies covering a ten-year period to shed light on the manner in which the Post-9/11 Heartland Horror films scrutinize and unravel the events, aspirations, anxieties, discourses, dogmas, and socio-political conflicts of the post-9/11 era.
As such, it will appeal to scholars and students of film studies, cultural studies and media studies, and those with interests in the relationship between popular culture and politics.