The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics (Postmillennial Pop #1)

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Synopsis
2017 The Association for the Studies of the Present Book PrizeFinalist Mention, 2017 Lora Romero First Book Award Presented by the American Studies AssociationWinner of the 2012 CLAGS Fellowship Award for Best First Book Project in LGBT StudiesHow fantasy meets reality as popular culture evolves and ignites postwar gender, sexual, and race revolutions.In 1964, noted literary critic Leslie Fiedler described American youth as “new mutants,” social rebels severing their attachments to American culture to remake themselves in their own image. 1960s comic book creators, anticipating Fiedler, began to morph American superheroes from icons of nationalism and white masculinity into actual mutant outcasts, defined by their genetic difference from ordinary humanity. These powerful misfits and “freaks” soon came to embody the social and political aspirations of America’s most marginalized groups, including women, racial and sexual minorities, and the working classes.In The New Mutants, Ramzi Fawaz draws upon queer theory to tell the story of these monstrous fantasy figures and how they grapple with radical politics from Civil Rights and The New Left to Women’s and Gay Liberation Movements. Through a series of comic book case studies—including The Justice League of America, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, and The New Mutants—alongside late 20th century fan writing, cultural criticism, and political documents, Fawaz reveals how the American superhero modeled new forms of social belonging that counterculture youth would embrace in the 1960s and after. The New Mutants provides the first full-length study to consider the relationship between comic book fantasy and radical politics in the modern United States.
Copyright:
2016

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
Book Size:
368 Pages
ISBN-13:
9781479823499
Related ISBNs:
9781479823086
Publisher:
NYU Press
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
New York University Press
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
Nonfiction, Literature and Fiction, Social Studies, Language Arts
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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