By Vivian Asimos
Books
Cosplay and the Dressing of Identity
A close exploration of the vibrant world of cosplay.
Cosplay, born from the fusion of ‘costume’ and ‘play’, transcends mere dress-up by transforming enthusiasts of TV shows, movies, books or video games into living embodiments of their cherished characters. This book is a close exploration of the vibrant world of cosplay, showing what makes it so captivating for so many.
The book frames cosplay as an enactment and embodiment of mythology, revealing its inherent complexity, and providing valuable insight into cosplayers’ experiences. Exploring cosplay performances, the skills involved and its community, the book shows how cosplayers build a strong connection to the characters and stories they treasure, and ultimately how they are constructing their own identities.
Digital Mythology and the Internet’s Monster
Exploring a prominent digital mythology, this book proposes a new way of viewing both online narratives and the online communities which tell them.
The Slender Man – a monster known for making children disappear and causing violent deaths to the adults who seek to know more about him – is used as an extended case study to explore the role of digital communities, as well as the question of the existence of a broader “digital culture”.
Structural anthropological mythic analysis and ethnographic details demonstrate how the Slender Man mythology is structured, and how its everlasting nature in the online communities demonstrates an importance of the mythos.
Digital Monsters
Horror storytelling online has a rich history as detailed and long as the internet itself. Digital Monsters explores many of these narratives and reads them to see what these stories tell us about the internet, about digital communities, and about ourselves. This book seeks to explore the monsters of the virtual world. It will not only detail the narratives but also explore the connections between these monsters and the world outside. It demonstrates what these monsters have to say about the people who write them and draw them, and what they show us about the communal and social words surrounding them.
The digital monsters in this book enjoy living in the middle ground between typically considered strict dichotomies. These monsters, which both are and aren’t simultaneously, reveal other categories the communities hold dear. These categories, as well as the destruction of categories, are what will be explored through the detailed study of these digital monsters. Studying these narratives will provide us with an understanding of how these narratives relate to the broader horror genre, and what it has to say about the social and cultural contexts it finds itself in.
The Bloomsbury Reader in the Study of Myth
What is myth? Why do myths exist? What do myths do? Where are myths going?
This reader is organized into 4 parts which explore these questions. Drawing on over 10 years of experience teaching myth in religious studies and anthropology departments in the UK, USA and Continental Europe the editors have brought together key works in the theory of myth. Key features include:
- a general introduction to the reader that outlines a comparative and interpretative framework
- an introduction contextualizing each part and sub-section
- an introduction to each reading by the editors
- a companion website that provides discussion questions and further reading suggestions, including primary sources.
From functionalism to feminism, nationalism to globalization, and psychoanalysis to spatial analysis, this reader covers the classic and contemporary theories and approaches needed to understand what myth is, why myths exist, what they do, and what the future holds for them.