Check It Out: Neomedievalism, Popular Culture, and the Academy

Finally had a chance to review this. Looks like a great resource. 

Neomedievalism, Popular Culture, and the Academy: From Tolkien to Game of Thrones

by KellyAnn Fitzpatrick

Full details and ordering information from the publisher is available at this link.

TITLE DETAILS

244 Pages

21.6 x 13.8 cm

Series: Medievalism
Series Vol. Number: 16

Imprint: D.S.Brewer


Hardcover
9781843845416
October 2019
$95.00 / £65.00

Ebook (EPDF)
9781787447028
October 2019
$29.95 / £24.99

Ebook (EPUB)
9781800109308
October 2019
$29.95 / £24.99

Description

The medieval in the modern world is here explored in a variety of media, from film and book to gaming.

Medievalism - the ways in which post-medieval societies perceive, interpret, reimagine, or appropriate the Middle Ages - permeates popular culture. From Disney princesses to Game of Thrones, medieval fairs to World of Warcraft, contemporary culture keeps finding new ways to reinvent and repackage the period. Medievalism itself, then, continues to evolve while it is also subject to technological advances, prominent invocations in political discourse, and the changing priorities of the academy. This has led some scholars to adopt the term "neomedievalism", a concept originating in part from the work of the late Umberto Eco, which calls for new avenues of inquiry into the way we think about the medieval.
This book examines recent evolutions of (neo)medievalism across multiple media, from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings to the film Beowulf and medieval gaming. These evolutions can take the form of what one might consider to be pop culture objects of critique (art, commodity, amusement park, video game) or academic tools of critique (monographs, articles, lectures, university seminars). It is by reconciling these seemingly disparate forms that we can better understand the continual, interconnected, and often politicized reinvention of the Middle Ages in both popular and academic culture.

Contents

Introduction
1. The Academy and the Making of Neomedievalism
2. Tolkien: From Medieval Studies to Medievalist Fantasy
3. Hollywood Genders the Neomedieval: Sleeping Beauty/Beowulf/Maleficent
4. Game of Thrones: Neomedievalism and the Myths of Inheritance
5. Magic: The Gathering and the Markets of Neomedievalism
6. Digital Gaming: Coding a Connective Neomedievalism
Bibliography

Author

KELLYANN FITZPATRICK is an affiliated researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Recent Scholarship: Brode and Brode's It's the Disney Version!

 I finally picked up a copy of this intriguing collection. 

It's the Disney Version!: Popular Cinema and Literary Classics

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442266070/It%27s-the-Disney-Version-Popular-Cinema-and-Literary-Classics

Edited by Douglas Brode and Shea T. Brode

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 254 • Trim: 6 x 9 

 

978-1-4422-6606-3 • Hardback • June 2016 • $95.00 • (£73.00)

978-1-4422-6607-0 • eBook • June 2016 • $90.00 • (£69.00) 

 

In 1937, the first full-length animated film produced by Walt Disney was released. Based on a fairy tale written by the Brothers Grimm, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was an instant success and set the stage for more film adaptations over the next several decades. From animated features like and Bambi to live action films such as Mary Poppins, Disney repeatedly turned to literary sources for inspiration—a tradition the Disney studios continues well into the twenty-first century.

In It’s the Disney Version!: Popular Cinema and Literary Classics, Douglas Brode and Shea T. Brode have collected essays that consider the relationship between a Disney film and the source material from which it was drawn. Analytic yet accessible, these essays provide a wide-ranging study of the term “The Disney Version” and what it conveys to viewers. Among the works discussed in this volume are Alice in Wonderland, Mary Poppins, Pinocchio,Sleeping Beauty, Tarzan, and Winnie the Pooh.

In these intriguing essays, contributors to this volume offer close textual analyses of both the original work and of the Disney counterpart. Featuring articles that consider both positive and negative elements that can be found in the studio’s output, It’s the Disney Version!: Popular Cinema and Literary Classics will be of interest to scholars and students of film, as well as the diehard Disney fan.

Contents (from WorldCat):

Introduction: once upon a time at the movies / Douglas Brode --

"And they lived happily ever after?": Disney's animated adaptation of Snow White and the seven dwarfs (1937) and Fleischers' Gulliver's travels / David McGowan --

Marionette as metaphor: Pinocchio and evolving attitudes toward education / Jean-Marie Apostolides --

Here be gay dragons: queer allegory and Disney's The reluctant dragon / Tison Pugh --

Uncle Walt's Uncle Remus: Disney's distortion of Harris's hero / Peggy A. Russo --

"Glory in the flower": Disneyfying Bambi / David Payne --

Through the cinematic looking glass: Walt Disney's 1951 animated Alice and Tim Burton's 2010 film / Sarah Boslaugh --

Walt Disney and Robert Louis Stevenson: Haskin's Treasure island or Stevenson's Kidnapped? / Scott Allen Nollen --

Of medieval ballads and movie musicals: Walt Disney and the Robin Hood legend / Shea T. Brode with Douglas Brode --

"Do you believe in fairies?": Peter Pan, Walt Disney, and me / Elizabeth Bell --

"In God's good time": Walt Disney and 1950s Cold War culture / Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper --

Perchance to dream: a narrative analysis of Disney's Sleeping beauty / Alexis Finnerty with Douglas Brode --

"It's a jungle out there, kid!": Walt Disney and the American 1960s / Greg Metcalf --

"Higitus! figitus!": of Merlin and Disney magic / Susan Aronstein --

"This is not the Mary Poppins I know!": P.L. Travers goes to Hollywood / David S. and Olga Silverman --

The wonderful worlds of Dickens and Disney: animated adaptations of Oliver Twist and A Christmas carol / Shari Hodges Holt --

The tao at Pooh corner: Disney's portrayal of a very philosophical bear / Anne Collins Smith and Owen M. Smith --

From icon to Disneyfication: a mermaid's aesthetic journey / Finn Hauberg Mortensen --

Pocahontas as Disney princess: history, legend, literature, and movie mythology / Kathy Merlock Jackson and Gary Edgerton --

"Driven to sin": Victor Hugo's complex vision of humanity in Disney's The hunchback of Notre Dame / Michael Smith --

The integrity of an ape-man: Burroughs, Disney, and the meaning of the Tarzan myth / Stanley A. Galloway.

 

 

Authors:

 

Douglas Brode teaches popular culture at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, the University of Texas at San Antonio, and Our Lady of the Lake University (also in San Antonio). He has published more than 35 books, including Rod Sterling and The Twilight Zone (2009). He is the coeditor of Myth, Media, and Culture in Star Wars: An Anthology (2012) and Sex, Politics and Religion in Star Wars: An Anthology (2012), and Dracula’s Daughters: The Female Vampire on Film (2013). Brode is a contributor to the upcoming PBS-TV mini-series: American Masters: Walt Disney. Shea T. Brode has an MA in Literature and Cultural Studies from the University Autonoma in Madrid. Douglas and Shea are the coeditors of The Star Trek Universe: Franchising the Final Frontier (2015) and Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek: The Original Cast Adventures (2015).