Catherin & Alexander, Love on the Internet, is about two romantically driven people that have been, for the greatest part of their lives, unlucky in love. They see the romance in the rose opening its bloom for the world to see the beauty held within, as well as in the ability for two people with romantic hearts to find each other, enjoying the poetic beauty of the world around them. However, each feels disappointed in the fact that they have not found the person that brings loves star into focus. Catherin, a hopeful romantic, is a woman that craves romance, enjoys being a woman, and loves being feminine. She envisions herself in romantic scenarios with a man that can hold her heart in his hands, capable of loving her for the rest of her life. On the other hand, Alexander is not only a man of action, an individual that has always enjoyed adventure, never missing an opportunity to feel the adrenaline run through his veins, but also a true romantic and a Southern gentleman. He believes strength is best found in the way in which a man loves the woman in his life and in the way he lives his life as an example for others to follow. After experiencing another bad date, he decides to follow the advice of a friend and join an Internet dating site. Catherin, experiencing a similar situation over six thousand miles away, does the same, allowing them both to find a love that bridges two completely different worlds, uniting their hearts forever together.

Thinking Through Theatre and Performance presents a bold and innovative approach to the study of theatre and performance. Instead of topics, genres, histories or theories, the book starts with the questions that theatre and performance are uniquely capable of asking: How does theatre function as a place for seeing and hearing? How do not only bodies and voices but also objects and media perform? How do memories, emotions and ideas continue to do their work when the performance is over? And how can theatre and performance intervene in social, political and environmental structures and frameworks? Written by leading international scholars, each chapter of this volume is built around a key performance example, and detailed discussions introduce the methodologies and theories that help us understand how these performances are practices of enquiry into the world. Thinking through Theatre and Performance is essential for those involved in making, enjoying, critiquing and studying theatre, and will appeal to anyone who is interested in the questions that theatre and performance ask of themselves and of us.

Destruction, Ethics, and Intergalactic Love: Exploring Y: The Last Man and Saga offers a creative and accessible exploration of the two comic book series, examining themes like nonviolence; issues of gender and war; heroes and moral failures; forgiveness and seeking justice; and the importance of diversity and religious pluralism. Through close interdisciplinary reading and personal narratives, the author delves into the complex worlds of Y and Saga in search of an ethics, meaning, and a path resonant with real-world struggles. Reading these works side by side, the analysis draws parallels and seeks common themes around the four central ideas of seeking and making meaning in a meaningless world; love and parenting through oppression and grief; peacefulness when surrounded by violence; and the perils and hopes of diversity and communion. This timely and thoughtful study will resonate with scholars and students of comic studies, media and cultural studies, philosophy, theology, literature, psychology, and popular culture studies.

This book provides a bridge between Shakespeare studies and classical social theory, opening up readings of Shakespeare to a new audience outside of literary studies and the humanities. Shakespeare has long been known as a “great thinker” and this book reads his plays through the lens of an anthropologist, revealing new connections between Shakespeare’s plays and the lives we now lead. Close readings of a selection of frequently studied plays—Hamlet, The Winter’s Tale, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Julius Caesar, and King Lear—engage with the texts in detail while connecting them with some of the biggest questions we all ask ourselves, about love, friendship, ritual, language, human interactions, and the world around us. The plays are examined through various social theories including performance theory, cognitive theory, semiotics, exchange theory, and structuralism. The book concludes with a consideration of how “the new astronomy” of his day and developments in optics changed the very idea of “perspective,” and shaped Shakespeare’s approach to embedding social theory in his dramatic texts. This accessible and engaging book will appeal to those approaching Shakespeare from outside literary studies but will also be valuable to literature students approaching Shakespeare for the first time, or looking for a new angle on the plays.

The focus of this book is on the media representations of the use of the Internet in seeking intimate connections—be it a committed relationship, a hook-up, or a community in which to dabble in fringe sexual practices. Popular culture (film, narrative television, the news media, and advertising) present two very distinct pictures of the use of the Internet as related to intimacy. From news reports about victims of online dating, to the presentation of the desperate and dateless, the perverts and the deviants, a distinct frame for the intimacy/Internet connection is negativity. In some examples however, a changing picture is emerging. The ubiquitousness of Internet use today has meant a slow increase in comparatively more positive representations of successful online romances in the news, resulting in more positive-spin advertising and a more even-handed presence of such liaisons in narrative television and film. Both the positive and the negative media representations are categorised and analysed in this book to explore what they reveal about the intersection of gender, sexuality, technology and the changing mores regarding intimacy.

Following the death of her mother, Ella spent some years at Windsor with her grandmother, Queen Victoria. During this time she met & became engaged to Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovitch. It was at their wedding that her sister, Alix, formed a love match with the future Tsar Nicholas II, an event which sealed the fate of both sisters.

Shakespeare and Commedia dell’Arte examines the ongoing influence of commedia dell’arte on Shakespeare’s plays. Exploring the influence of commedia dell’arte improvisation, sight gags, and wordplay on the development of Shakespeare’s plays, Artemis Preeshl blends historical research with extensive practical experience to demonstrate how these techniques might be applied when producing some of Shakespeare's best-known works today. Each chapter focuses on a specific play, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to The Winter’s Tale, drawing out elements of commedia dell’arte style in the playscripts and in contemporary performance. Including contemporary directors’ notes and interviews with actors and audience members alongside Elizabethan reviews, criticism, and commentary, Shakespeare and Commedia dell’Arte presents an invaluable resource for scholars and students of Renaissance theatre.

This lively and innovative introduction to Shakespeare promotes active engagement with the plays, rather than recycling factual information. Covering a range of texts, it is divided into seven subject-based chapters: Character; Performance; Texts; Language; Structure; Sources and History, and it does not assume any prior knowledge. Instead, it develops ways of thinking and provides the reader with resources for independent research through the 'Where next?' sections at the end of each chapter. The book draws on scholarship without being overwhelmed by it, and unlike other introductory guides to Shakespeare it emphasizes that there is space for new and fresh thinking by students and readers, even on the most-studied and familiar plays.

In the first ever book devoted to a critical investigation of the personal style blogosphere, Minh-Ha T. Pham examines the phenomenal rise of elite Asian bloggers who have made a career of posting photographs of themselves wearing clothes on the Internet. Pham understands their online activities as “taste work” practices that generate myriad forms of capital for superbloggers and the brands they feature. A multifaceted and detailed analysis, Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet addresses questions concerning the status and meaning of “Asian taste” in the early twenty-first century, the kinds of cultural and economic work Asian tastes do, and the fashion public and industry’s appetite for certain kinds of racialized eliteness. Situating blogging within the historical context of gendered and racialized fashion work while being attentive to the broader cultural, technological, and economic shifts in global consumer capitalism, Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet has profound implications for understanding the changing and enduring dynamics of race, gender, and class in shaping some of the most popular work practices and spaces of the digital fashion media economy.

The representation of aquatic people in contemporary film and television—from their on-screen sexuality to the mockumentaries they’ve inspired. Mermaids have been a feature of western cinema since its inception and the number of films, television series, and videos representing them has expanded exponentially since the 1980s. Making a Splash analyses texts produced within a variety of audiovisual genres. Following an overview of mermaids in western culture that draws on a range of disciplines including media studies, psychoanalysis, and post-structuralism, individual chapters provide case studies of particular engagements with the folkloric figure. From Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” to the creation of Ursula, Ariel’s tentacled antagonist in Disney’s 1989 film, to aspects of mermaid vocality, physicality, agency, and sexuality in films and even representations of mermen, this work provides a definitive overview of the significance of these ancient mythical figures in 110 years of western audio-visual media.