Mediated Boyhoods

Mediated Boyhoods: Boys, Teens, and Young Men in Popular Media and Culture brings together work from various disciplines that explores the relationships among the everyday lives of boys and such media platforms as television, films, games, sports, music, urban and suburban culture, fashion, young adult novels, Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. Offering a comprehensive overview of boyhood studies, chapters consider questions about the current state of boyhood as it is represented in the popular media; the ways that boys are influenced by and work to influence popular culture; the ways that popular texts often reflect adult expectations, anxieties, and prejudices about boys and boyhood; and the ways that boys, teens, and young men are often able to reflect upon and to act, sometimes unpredictably, to resist, subvert, or re-imagine and re-create popular culture and media. The volume serves as a companion to Mediated Girlhoods: New Explorations of Girls' Media Culture, edited by Mary Celeste Kearney.

This expansive, lively introduction charts the connections between international youth cultures and the development of global media and communication. From 1950s drive-ins and jukeboxes to contemporary social media, the book examines modern youth cultures in their social, economic, and political contexts. Exploring the rise of young people as a distinct media market, the book examines the relation of youth to modern consumerism, marketing, and digital technologies. The chapters are packed with analysis of media representations of youth, debates about the media’s 'effects' on young audiences, and young people’s use of the media to elaborate identities and negotiate social relationships. Drawing on a wealth of international examples, the book explores the impact of globalisation and new media technologies on youth cultures around the world. Assessing a profusion of worldwide research, the book shows how modern youth cultures can only be understood as part of an international web of connections, exchanges, and experiences. With an ideal balance between detailed examples and engaging analysis, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in youth cultures and the modern media.

Writing Youth: Young Adult Fiction as Literacy Sponsorship studies young adult (YA) fiction that analyzes corporate sponsorship of media literacy practices in and through YA fiction. It shows how YA novels model for young people ways to manage the various media tools that surround them.

Melvin Burgess has made a powerful name for himself in the world of children's and young adult literature, emerging in the 1990s as the author of over twenty critically acclaimed novels. This collection of original essays by a team of established and new scholars introduces readers to the key debates surrounding Burgess's most challenging work, including controversial young adult novels Junk and Doing It. Covering a variety of critical and theoretical perspectives, the volume also presents exciting new readings of some of his less familiar fiction for children, and features an interview with the author.

Beginning with the publication of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1950 and concluding with the appearance of The Last Battle in 1956, C. S. Lewis's seven-book series chronicling the adventures of a group of young people in the fictional land of Narnia has become a worldwide classic of children's literature. This stimulating collection of original essays by critics in a wide range of disciplines explores the past place, present status, and future importance of The Chronicles of Narnia. With essays ranging in focus from textual analysis to film and new media adaptations, to implications of war/trauma and race and gender, this cutting-edge New Casebook encourages readers to think about this much-loved series in fresh and exciting ways.

Post-war Japan was often held up as the model example of the first mature industrial societies outside the Western economy, and the first examples of "middle-mass" society. Today, and since the bursting of the economic bubble in the 1990’s, the promises of Japan, Inc., seem far away. Social Class in Contemporary Japan is the first single volume that traces the dynamics of social structure, institutional socialization and class culture through this turbulent period, all the way into the contemporary neoliberal moment. In an innovative multi-disciplinary approach that include top scholars working on quantitative class structure, policy development, and ethnographic analysis, this volume highlights the centrality of class formation to our understanding of the many levels of Japanese society. The chapters each address a different aspect of class formation and transformation which stand on their own. Taken together, they document the advantages of putting Japan in the broad comparative framework of class analysis and the enduring importance of social class to the analysis of industrial and post-industrial societies. Written by a team of contributors from Japan, the US and Europe this book will be invaluable to students and scholars of Japanese society and culture, as well as those interested in cultural anthropology and social class alike.

This collection examines LEGO from an array of critical and cultural studies approaches, foregrounding the world-renowned brand's ideological power and influence. Given LEGO’s status as the world’s largest toy manufacturer and a transnational multimedia conglomerate, Cultural Studies of Lego: More Than Just Bricks considers LEGO media's cultural messages; creativity with and within LEGO artifacts; and diversity within the franchise, including gender and race representation. The chapters’ in-depth analyses of topics including LEGO films, marketing tactics, play sets, novelizations, and fans offer compelling insights relevant to those interested in the LEGO brand and broader trends in the children’s popular culture market alike.

The roles that media play in the lives of children and adolescents, as well as their potential implications for their cognitive, emotional, social and behavioral development, have attracted growing research attention in a variety of disciplines. The Routledge International Handbook of Children, Adolescents and Media analyses a broad range of complementary areas of study, including children as media consumers, children as active participants in media making, and representations of children in the media. The handbook presents a collection that spans a variety of disciplines including developmental psychology, media studies, public health, education, feminist studies and the sociology of childhood. Essays provide a unique intellectual mapping of current knowledge, exploring the relationship of children and media in local, national, and global contexts. Divided into five parts, each with an introduction explaining the themes and topics covered, the handbook features 57 new contributions from 71 leading academics from 38 countries. Chapters consider vital questions by analyzing texts, audience, and institutions, including: the role of policy and parenting in regulating media for children the relationships between children’s’ on-line and off-line social networks children’s strategies of resistance to persuasive messages in advertising media and the construction of gender and ethnic identities The Handbook’s interdisciplinary approach and comprehensive, international scope make it an authoritative, state of the art guide to the nascent field of Children’s Media Studies. It will be indispensable for media scholars and professionals, policy makers, educators, and parents.