LibGuides: Rhetoric of Pop Culture: Literature Review

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Subject: rhetorical criticism

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Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What they Mean by Douglas Wolk
Call Number: 741.53 W862R

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Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
Call Number: 741.5 M165U

Seminal work on the unique rhetoric techniques of graphics novels and comics.
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Comics and Adaptation by Mitaine (Editor)
Call Number: 741.436 C733

Frameworks and critical assessment of comics/graphic books adapted from other texts.
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Panel to the Screen: Style, American Film, and Comic Books During the Blockbuster Era by Drew Morton
Call Number: 791.436 M889P

Adaptations from comics to film and vice versa.
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Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative by Will Eisner
Call Number: 741.51 E365G

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A Cultural History of the Punisher: Marvel Comics and the Politics of Vengeance by Kent Worcester
Call Number: 741.5973 W919C

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Drawing on Religion: Reading and the Moral Imagination in Comics and Graphic Novels by Ken Koltun-Fromm
Call Number: 741.5382 K816D and Online

explores what religious stereotypes do and how they function in comics in ways that might expand or diminish our imaginative worlds.
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Evangelical Christians and Popular Culture [3 Volumes] by Robert H. Woods Jr. (Editor)
Call Number: 261.0973 W894E V.1-3 Stanley Reading Room

This three-volume collection demonstrates the depth and breadth of evangelical Christians' consumption, critique, and creation of popular culture, and how evangelical Christians are both influenced by--and influence--mainstream popular culture, covering comic books to movies to social media.
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Faith and Fiction: Christian literature in America Today by Anita Gandolfo
Call Number: 810.93823 G196F

Examines Christian literature's place in American culture today and explores the cultural meaning and significance of the wildly popular Christian fiction now available.
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Popologetics: Popular Culture in Christian Perspective by Ted Turnau
Call Number: 261 T942P Stanley Reading Room

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Protestant Evangelical Literary Culture and Contemporary Society by Jan Blodgett
Call Number: 813.509382 B652P

How evangelical novels can serve as cultural artifacts of the evangelical community in contemporary American society.
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Drawing on Religion: Reading and the Moral Imagination in Comics and Graphic Novels by Ken Koltun-Fromm
Call Number: 741.5382 K816D and Online

explores what religious stereotypes do and how they function in comics in ways that might expand or diminish our imaginative worlds.
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Ways of Seeing by John Berger
Call Number: 741.01 W359 1982

Seminal work. Argues that the way a work of art is perceived differs depending on the person perceiving it, and that one's own ideology and background guide one's absorption of cultural artefacts. Particularly relevant to art's depiction of women.
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Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema by Mulvey, Laura
Call Number: Online

Originally appearing in Screen 16.3 (1975): 6-18. One of the most frequently cited articles for analysis of visual works. Coined the term "male gaze".
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Panel to the Screen: Style, American Film, and Comic Books During the Blockbuster Era by Drew Morton
Call Number: 791.436 M889P

Adaptations from comics to film and vice versa.
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Power and Subversion in Game of Thrones by A. Keith Kelly (Editor)
Call Number: 791.4572 P887

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Popular Analysis: Understanding Taylor Swift's Anti-Hero by Jay Meadows
Call Number: 781.6409 M482P

ISBN: ‎

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John Ford's America by Jeffrey Richards
Call Number: 791.4302 R514J

Rhetoric of the rugged West and Western cultural images
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Rhetorics of Display by Lawrence J. Prelli; Thomas W. Benson
Call Number: 302.2301 P924R and online

Diverse range of displays―from body piercing to a civil rights memorial to a Titanic exhibition to imagery found in gambling casinos―and examine the ways that phenomena, persons, places, events, identities, communities, and cultures are exhibited before audiences.
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Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres by Gerard A. Hauser; Phaedra C. Pezzullo
Call Number: 303.38 H376V

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Authenticating Whiteness: Karens, Selfies, and Pop Stars by Rachel E. Dubrofsky
Call Number: 305.809 D819A and Online

Explores the idea that popular media implicitly portrays whiteness as credible, trustworthy, familiar, and honest, and that this portrayal is normalized and ubiquitous.
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Digital Playgrounds: The Hidden Politics of Children's Online Play Spaces, Virtual Worlds, and Connected Games by Sara Grimes
Call Number: 794.8083 G862H

Argues that children's online playgrounds, virtual worlds, and connected games are much more than mere sources of fun and diversion - they serve as the sites of complex negotiations of power between children, parents, developers, politicians, and other actors.
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