9781914420320
280 pp
PB 197 x 130 mm
Mono
£10.99/$14.95
Cultural Studies / Occult
World rights available
A unique guidebook that explores the dark, often horrifying, history of the US.
Part cultural history and part travelogue, Haunted States traces how the American Gothic draws inspiration from the natural and built environments, with the astounding geographical variation of the landscape influencing the distinctive forms of horror produced across its many diverse regions. The book also investigates how the horrors of the American Gothic have their roots in the nation’s dark history of colonialism, slavery, violence and oppression – past sins that continue to haunt the national consciousness to this day.
Incorporating first-person travel narrative, historical context and supplementary interviews, Haunted States journeys across the USA to learn about its eclectic, regional forms of horror.
MIRANDA CORCORAN is a lecturer in twenty-first-century literature at University College Cork and the author of Witchcraft and Adolescence in American Popular Culture: Teen Witches.
9781914420092
300 pp
PB 197 x 130 mm
Mono
£10.99/$14.95
Music / Politics
World rights available
Analyses how Black music and culture framed how we passed the time in the first 18 months of the pandemic.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, music listening increased as people used it to help to counter the psychological fallout of lockdown and reduce its effects of isolation, restriction and boredom. At the same time, concerts and other musical events moved online, and even when lockdown eased, social distancing meant that group musical and cultural events took on a different format.
With a focus on contemporary Black music, this book takes a deep dive into a few of the various forms that popular culture took over this period, including Kano’s Newham Talks series; Steve McQueen’s BBC anthology Small Axe; the Verzuz DJ Battle series; TikTok’s Don’t Rush Challenge; radio station theresnosignal; and many more.
JOY WHITE is the author of Urban Music and Entrepreneurship: Beats, Rhymes and Young People’s Enterprise and Terraformed: Young Black Lives in the Inner City.