Discovery and Exploration Reading List - JSCC Pioneer Con 2024

The choices that individuals make in moments of crisis can transform them. By focusing on fictional characters trapped on fictional islands, the book examines how individuals react when forced to make hard choices within the liminal space of a'prison'island. At stake is the perception of choice: do characters believe that they have the power to choose, or do they think that they are at the mercy of fate?

Topographies of Popular Culture departs from the deceptively simple notion that popular culture always takes place somewhere. By studying the spatial and topographic imaginations at work in popular culture, the book identifies and illustrates several specific tendencies that deserve increased attention in studies of the popular. In combining the study of popular texts with a broad variety of geographical contexts, the volume presents a global and cross-cultural approach to popular culture's topographies.

The Handbook of Japanese Media and Popular Culture in Transition brings together new research and perspectives on popular media phenomena, as well as shining a spotlight on texts that are less well known or studied. Organized into five thematic sections, the chapters span a diverse range of cultural genres, including contemporary film and television, postwar cinema, advertising, popular fiction, men's magazines, manga and anime, karaoke and digital media.

The study of popular culture has come of age, and is now an area of central concern for the well-established domain of cultural studies. In a context where research in popular culture has become closely intertwined with current debates within cultural studies, this volume provides a selection of recent insights into the study of the popular from cultural studies perspectives.

Costume defines the superhero, disguising and distinguishing him or her from the civilian alter ego. The often garish garb expresses a hero's otherness and empowers its wearers to seek a primal form of justice.This book provides the first interdisciplinary analysis of the superhero costume and investigates wide-ranging issues such as identity, otherness, ritual dress and disguise. Analysis focuses on the implications of wearing superhero costume, exploring interpretations of the costumed hero and the extent to which the costume defines his or her role.

In this fast-paced information age, how can Americans know what's really important and what's just a passing fashion Now more than ever, we need a source that concisely sums up the knowledge that matters to Americans -- the people, places, ideas, and events that shape our cultural conversation. With more than six thousand entries,The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy is that invaluable source. Wireless technology. Gene therapy. NAFTA.

Anthropologists training to do fieldwork in far-off, unfamiliar places prepare for significant challenges with regard to language, customs, and other cultural differences. However, like other travelers to unknown places, they are often unprepared to deal with the most basic and necessary requirement: food. Although there are many books on the anthropology of food, Adventures in Eating is the first intended to prepare students for the uncomfortable dining situations they may encounter over the course of their careers. Whether sago grubs, jungle rats, termites, or the pungent durian fruit are on the table, participating in the act of sharing food can establish relationships vital to anthropologists' research practices and knowledge of their host cultures. Using their own experiences with unfamiliar--and sometimes unappealing--food practices and customs, the contributors explore such eating moments and how these moments can produce new understandings of culture and the meaning of food beyond the immediate experience of eating it.

Every person comes to know and understand their life from their own perspective. As a result, it is often difficult and sometimes unbelievable to realize that others, whom one may or may not know, might also experience daily life in a vastly different way. Explorations in Diversity offers readers the opportunity to step into the lives of diverse others and experience their lives through their eyes. Some readers may find themselves struggling to comprehend or even believe the experiences this text's authors share, or where they fit within each narrative. However, each account in this text ultimately aims to open minds, hearts, and mouths in ways that push each of us toward a better understanding of our own privileged statuses so that we can use who we are, what we say, and what we do to make our society more accepting and inclusive of all our diverse representations.

We live in an incredible period in history. The Computer Revolution may be even more life-changing than the Industrial Revolution. We can do things with computers that could never be done before, and computers can do things for us that could never be done before.But our love of computers should not cloud our thinking about their limitations.We are told that computers are smarter than humans and that data mining can identify previously unknown truths, or make discoveries that will revolutionize our lives. Our lives may well be changed, but not necessarily for the better.

Although artificial intelligence (AI) has many potential benefits, it has also been shown to suffer from a number of challenges for successful performance in complex real-world environments such as military operations, including brittleness, perceptual limitations, hidden biases, and lack of a model of causation important for understanding and predicting future events. These limitations mean that AI will remain inadequate for operating on its own in many complex and novel situations for the foreseeable future, and that AI will need to be carefully managed by humans to achieve their desired utility. Human-AI Teaming: State-of-the-Art and Research Needs examines the factors that are relevant to the design and implementation of AI systems with respect to human operations.

It's official: the zombie apocalypse is here.  The living dead have been lurking in popular culture since the 1930s, but they have never been as ubiquitous or as widely-embraced as they are today. Zombie Cinema is a lively and accessible introduction to this massively popular genre. Presenting a historical overview of zombie appearances in cinema and on television, Ian Olney also considers why, more than any other horror movie monster, zombies have captured the imagination of twenty-first-century audiences. Surveying the landmarks of zombie film and TV, from White Zombie to The Walking Dead, the book also offers unique insight into why zombies have gone global, spreading well beyond the borders of American and European cinema to turn up in films from countries as far-flung as Cuba, India, Japan, New Zealand, and Nigeria. Both fun and thought-provoking, Zombie Cinema will give readers a new perspective on our ravenous hunger for the living dead.