Today, virtually all BA programs in English at German universities place a strong focus on Cultural Studies. However, textbooks that introduce first-year students to the subject are rare, and the few existing ones are too complicated or not comprehensive enough. By contrast, this textbook introduces the key theories and concepts of Cultural Studies systematically and thoroughly. It puts particular emphasis on their application, aiming to enable students to do their own analyses of cultural...

Conspiracy theories seem to be proliferating today. Long relegated to a niche existence, conspiracy theories are now pervasive, and older conspiracy theories have been joined by a constant stream of new ones – that the USA carried out the 9/11 attacks itself, that the Ukrainian crisis was orchestrated by NATO, that we are being secretly controlled by a New World Order that keep us docile via chemtrails and vaccinations. Not to mention the moon landing that never happened.But what a...

Taking a global and interdisciplinary approach, the Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories provides a comprehensive overview of conspiracy theories as an important social, cultural and political phenomenon in contemporary life.This handbook provides the most complete analysis of the phenomenon to date. It analyses conspiracy theories from a variety of perspectives, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. It maps out the key debates, and includes chapters on the...

The editors have gathered essays that not only make a major contribution to the effort to replace homophobic discourse, but also speak persuasively to all readers interested in literature or literary history, contemporary theory, and popular culture.

Covid Conspiracy Theories in Global Perspective examines how conspiracy theories and related forms of misinformation and disinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic have circulated widely around the world.Covid conspiracy theories have attracted considerable attention from researchers, journalists, and politicians, not least because conspiracy beliefs have the potential to negatively affect adherence to public health measures. While most of this focus has been on the United...

This book explores the close connections between populism and conspiracy theory. Populism and Conspiracy Theory contributes to filling the gap in the research in this area. The individual contributions in Part I provide in-depth analyses of specific configurations of populism and conspiracy theory. Part II includes nuanced considerations of more theoretical issues. The case studies cover both right-wing and left-wing manifestations of populism, while highlighting that populist mov...

Conspiracy Theories in the European Digital Sphere offers a comparative account of online conspiracism, considered in terms of platform preferences, ideological content, aesthetic choices, political context, flow of travel and the role online conspiracism plays in the formation of community and identity.The book examines the assumptions that inform current ways of framing and combatting online conspiracy theories. Rather than approach online conspiracy theories as merely a...

On October 7, 1998, a young gay man was discovered bound to a fence in the hills outside Laramie, Wyoming, savagely beaten and left to die in an act of hate that shocked the nation. Matthew Shepard’s death became a national symbol of intolerance, but for the people of Laramie the event was deeply personal, and it’s they we hear in this stunningly effective theater piece, a deeply complex portrait of a community.

“McCraney’s richly drawn characters and colloquial poetry . . . manages to sound both epic and rooted in a specific place. Listen closely, and you might hear that thrilling sound that is one of the main reasons we go to the theater, that beautiful music of a new voice.”—The New York Times“Taut, expressive drama, The Brothers Size realizes the potential of theater to elevate the ordinary. . . . McCraney’s writing can be arresting.”—Time Out New York

The End of San Francisco breaks apart the conventions of memoir to reveal the passions and perils of a life that refuses to conform to the rules of straight or gay normalcy. A budding queer activist escapes to San Francisco, in search of a world more politically charged, sexually saturated, and ethically consistent—this is the person who evolves into Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, infamous radical queer troublemaker, organizer and agitator, community builder and anti-assimilationist...

Phallos is a 2004 novel by the acclaimed novelist and critic Samuel R. Delany. Taking the form of a gay pornographic novella, with the explicit sex omitted, Phallos is set during the reign of the second-century Roman emperor Hadrian, and circles around the historical account of the murder of the emperor's favorite, Antinous. The story moves from Syracuse to Egypt, from the Pillars of Hercules to Rome, from Athens to Byzantium, and back. Young Neoptolomus searches after the stolen phallus o...

On the heels of his bestselling and award-winning book Out/Lines: Underground Gay Graphics From Before Stonewall, Thomas Waugh offers more historic and erotically charged drawings, depicting aspects of gay male sexuality that were once hidden from public view.The more than 200, never-before-published images in Lust Unearthed are from the private collection of Ambrose DuBek, a Hollywood costume and set designer (his work included George Cukor’s 1939 film The Wo...