“Digital Theme Analysis” depicts the role that thematic analysis plays in literary criticism, places traditional thematic analysis approaches alongside digital ones, and offers best practices for carrying out digital thematic analysis in the context of Voyant Tools. The chapter identifies thematic analysis as a meaningful pattern that can be tra…[Read more]

It is May 2020. I am watching Kae Tempest perform Hold Your Own online. Tempest’s vocal performances are always rich in meaningful detail; from the rising semi-sung sound that embodies all the dreams and potentials of a fallible humanity to the throaty fall that
edges and softens our collapse into foolishness and self-defeat. Slipping between s…[Read more]

It is May 2020. I am watching Kae Tempest perform Hold Your Own online. Tempest’s vocal performances are always rich in meaningful detail; from the rising semi-sung sound that embodies all the dreams and potentials of a fallible humanity to the throaty fall that
edges and softens our collapse into foolishness and self-defeat. Slipping between s…[Read more]

A handbook essay that explains cultural studies apprroaches to the study of popular music.

“What does it mean to be a black film in twenty-first century America?”
 
Riffing off of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s work in Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man, who in turn drew heavily from Wallace Stevens’ 1917 poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” this chapter wrestles with some of the controversies surrounding the 2012 film Dj…[Read more]

A critical analysis of the racial politics of the “Blurred Lines” copyright infringement case.

This chapter examines the public discourse — both utopian and panic-driven — about the growth in popularity of the internet in the late 1990s and early 2000s