[Commlist] New Book: Recovering the Radical Promise of Superheroes: Un/Making Worlds

Ellen Kirkpatrick is delighted to announce that the new book on 
superheroes, their fans, and the radical imagination has been published 
by the amazing open access press, punctum books 
<https://punctumbooks.com/titles/recovering-the-radical-promise-of-superheroes-un-making-worlds/> (TOC 
below).

//Recovering the Radical Promise of Superheroes: Un/Making Worlds/// 
<https://punctumbooks.com/titles/recovering-the-radical-promise-of-superheroes-un-making-worlds/>offers 
/a speculative response to the question of superhero meaning (making), 
detailing not so much a hunt for genre meaning as a trip through a 
genre’s meaningscape. Looking anew at superhero meaning-making practices 
allows a distinct way of thinking about and describing the creative, 
formal, and ideological conditions of the genre and its protagonists, 
one removed from corralling binaries, one foregrounding the idea of a 
synergy—often unseen, uneasy, and even hostile—between official and 
unofficial agents of superhero meaning and one reframing familiar 
questions: What kinds of meaning do superhero texts engender? How is 
this meaning made? By whom and under what conditions? What processes and 
practices inform, regulate, and extend superhero meaning? And finally, 
scrutinizing superhero meaning (making) presents a new question: How 
might we reimagine its agents, surfaces, and spaces?

Centering the experiences and practices of excluded and marginalized 
superhero fans, /Recovering the Radical Promise of Superheroes: 
Un/Making Worlds/ reveals that genre meaning is not lodged in one place 
or another, neither in its official creators or fans, nor in “black and 
white” conservatism or in a “rainbow” of progressive possibilities. Nor 
is it even located somewhere in the in-between; it is instead better 
conceived of as an antagonistic, in-process nexus of meaning (making) 
undergirded by imbricated systems of power.

/"//The superhero genre contains multitudes! Though it too often reverts 
back to its most conservative form, Ellen Kirkpatrick’s tour de force 
book makes the case for the radical potential and transformative power 
of the superhero, a trope she traces across media and history, armed 
with state of the art theories of genre, world-making, and the civic 
imagination. I could not be more excited to see such a book coming out 
in the current moment where there are superheroes, seemingly, everywhere 
we look."/ ~ Henry Jenkins, author of /Comics and Stuff/


---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ commlist.org)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------