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Dr. Carrie's Research Outreach
In the thirty-third episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson (Seems Obvious to Me) and I welcome friend of the podcast Norma Jones to discuss the venerable pop culture brand that is Hello Kitty. In this episode, Norma and I position Hello Kitty not only as a pop icon but as a heroic […]
Read More Pop Culture Lens on Hello KittyIn the twenty-third episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher and I welcome back friend of the podcast Joe Belfeuil to discuss John Carpenter’s 1988 cult classic They Live and how the film seems as relevant if not more now. The short story the film is based on can be found on this website. […]
Read More Pop Culture Lens on They LiveThe Lost Generation: An Encyclopedia Editors: Bob Batchelor and Kathleen M. Turner The Lost Generation: An Encyclopedia (Rowman & Littlefield) brings to life the Jazz Age and the artists, writers, and influential figures that made it one of the nation’s most interesting and compelling periods. Since commentators often use the Lost Generation in comparison with […]
Read More Call for Contributors: Jazz Age Pop CultureI grew up in rural Northeastern Wisconsin. On a golf course. Country music was played in our high school gym’s fitness center. Tractors would sometimes keep you from moving at good speed on county roads. Winters were not the only thing smothered in white. I grew up at the time when hip-hop and rap cultures […]
Read More The Pop Culture Lens on Deltron 3030In the fifth episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson and I discuss one of my all time favorite pop culture texts: Planet of the Apes. I fell in love with this movie, this franchise — as dorky as it got in the 1970s — because of how many layers of meaning I […]
Read More Podcast Episode #5: Planet of the ApesAfter the event of this weekend, where normally we are only needing to remember our veterans but must now also remember those young men and women who died at the whim of a terrorist — of a misogynist extremist — I need to take a break from discussing fractured fandom and the sexist, and misogynist, […]
Read More Genre Mashing in Professional WrestlingBlink and you missed it, it seems. For this past Super Bowl XLVIII, the commercials, as always, were a draw and a source of conversation and controversy. And while everyone is talking about Coca-Cola’s “It’s Beautiful” ad, and the right-wing reaction against it, a different ad caught my eye. Here we have another attempt by The […]
Read More The Selling of ScientologyChris Olson and I kick off the In Media Res theme week to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. This piece, with a wonderful video produced by Chris, is based on the conference paper we recently presented at MPCA. You can see the post and the video via “I AM the Doctor”: Polysemic rhetoric and […]
Read More Doctor Who Theme Week @ In Media ResChristopher J. Olson presents his MPCA 2013 Conference talk on the portrayals of girls exploring their emergent sexuality in the coming-of-age stories Spirited Away, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Coraline. The films’ depictions of the girls’ experiences present positive representations for girls to embrace their agency, their sexuality, and their identity. via Fantasy, Fairy Tales, and Female Sexuality […]
Read More Fantasy, Fairy Tales, and Female Sexuality in Spirited Away, Pan’s Labyrinth, and CoralineOur definitions and metaphors: Discussion of how researchers and designers as users make sense of virtual world technologies This short essay reflects a project that occurred before, during and after an international workshop hosted by the Virtual Worlds Research Project. The goal was to complete a dialogue to help us understand the multiplicity of terms […]
Read More The Multiplicity of Virtual Worlds