The Twenty First Century Western

Focusing on twenty-first century Western films, including all major releases since the turn of the century, the essays in this volume cover a broad range of aesthetic and thematic aspects explored in these films, including gender and race. As diverse contributors focus on the individual subgenres of the traditional Western (the gunfighter, the Cavalry vs. Native American conflict, the role of women in Westerns, etc.), they share an understanding of the twenty-first century Western may be understood as a genre in itself. They argue that the films discussed here reimagine certain aspects of the more conventional Western and often reverse the ideology contained within them while employing certain forms and clichés that have become synonymous internationally with Westerns. The result is a contemporary sensibility that might be referred to as the postmodern Western.

Why has the zombie become such a pervasive figure in twenty-first-century popular culture? John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro and Filip Miscevic seek to answer this question by arguing that particular aspects of the zombie, common to a variety of media forms, reflect a crisis in modern Western culture. The authors examine the essential features of the zombie, including mindlessness, ugliness and homelessness, and argue that these reflect the outlook of the contemporary West and its attendant zeitgeists of anxiety, alienation, disconnection and disenfranchisement. They trace the relationship between zombies and the theme of secular apocalypse, demonstrating that the zombie draws its power from being a perversion of the Christian mythos of death and resurrection. Symbolic of a lost Christian worldview, the zombie represents a world that can no longer explain itself, nor provide us with instructions for how to live within it. The concept of 'domicide' or the destruction of home is developed to describe the modern crisis of meaning that the zombie both represents and reflects. This is illustrated using case studies including the relocation of the Anishinaabe of the Grassy Narrows First Nation, and the upheaval of population displacement in the Hellenistic period. Finally, the authors invoke and reformulate symbols of the four horseman of the apocalypse as rhetorical analogues to frame those aspects of contemporary collapse that elucidate the horror of the zombie. Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis is required reading for anyone interested in the phenomenon of zombies in contemporary culture. It will also be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience including students and scholars of culture studies, semiotics, philosophy, religious studies, eschatology, anthropology, Jungian studies, and sociology.

The first in a two-volume survey, readers are invited to re-examine the history of the West and its art through a multi-faceted contemporary lens. More than 40 artists are included who reflect the tremendous diversity, depth, and breadth of a field steeped in history. While some follow the traditions established by Remington and Russell, others seek to break from tradition, busting myths and bringing new insights and artistic styles to the genre. They come from both sides of the Mississippi and have pedigrees that range from bona fide cowboy or Native American credentials to careers in commercial illustration. The unifying theme is a common concern for and commitment to their art and the West itself. In this volume, contemporary artists are featured whose work revolves around the American Cowboy. Within these pages, many different artists, some of whom have been cowboys themselves, exhibit their rendition of the wonderful world of the West.

This edited volume takes stories from the "modern West" of the late twentieth century and carefully pulls them toward the present--explicitly tracing continuity with and unexpected divergence from trajectories established in the 1980s and 1990s.

Twenty-First Century Populism analyses the phenomenon of sustained populist growth in Western Europe by looking at the conditions facilitating populism in specific national contexts and then examining populist fortunes in those countries. The chapters are written by country experts and political scientists from across the continent.

Together their essays, whose focal point is an emerging network form of organization, bring order to the chaotic tumble of diagnoses, labels, and descriptions used to make sense of this changing world."--BOOK JACKET.

The first in a two-volume survey, readers are invited to re-examine the history of the West and its art through a multi-faceted contemporary lens. More than 40 artists are included who reflect the tremendous diversity, depth, and breadth of a field steeped in history. While some follow the traditions established by Remington and Russell, others seek to break from tradition, busting myths and bringing new insights and artistic styles to the genre. They come from both sides of the Mississippi and have pedigrees that range from bona fide cowboy or Native American credentials to careers in commercial illustration. The unifying theme is a common concern for and commitment to their art and the West itself. In this volume, contemporary artists are featured whose work revolves around the American Cowboy. Within these pages, many different artists, some of whom have been cowboys themselves, exhibit their rendition of the wonderful world of the West.