1st Edition
Popular Geopolitics Plotting an Evolving Interdiscipline
This book brings together scholars from across a variety of academic disciplines to assess the current state of the subfield of popular geopolitics. It provides an archaeology of the field, maps the flows of various frameworks of analysis into (and out of) popular geopolitics, and charts a course forward for the discipline. It explores the real-world implications of popular culture, with a particular focus on the evolving interdisciplinary nature of popular geopolitics alongside interrelated disciplines including media, cultural, and gender studies.
List of Figures List of Tables Foreword — An Odd Couple? Popular Culture and Geopolitics (Iver B Neumann) Acknowledgements Introduction: Theorising the Realm of Popular Geopolitics (Robert A. Saunders and Vlad Strukov) Part I: Mapping the (Inter)Discipline of Popular Geopolitics 1 The Origins and Evolution of Popular Geopolitics: An Interview with Jo Sharp and Klaus Dodds (Jason Dittmer) 2 Popular Geopolitics and Popular Culture in World Politics: Pasts, Presents, Futures (Kyle Grayson) 3 Towards a New Paradigm of Resistance: Theorising Popular Geopolitics as an Interdiscipline (Vlad Strukov) 4 Gender Studies and Popular Geopolitics: Indispensable Bedfellows for Interdisciplinarity (Federica Caso) 5 Crossing the Boundary: ‘Real World’ Geopolitical Responses to the Popular (Robert A Saunders) Part II: Popular Geopolitics Goes Global and Looks into the Future 6 The Convenient Fiction of Geopolitics: Rethinking ‘America’ in the Geopolitical Imagination of Yugoslav Culture (Maša Kolanović) 7 Beyond Brand Bollywood: Alternative Articulations of Geopolitical Discourse in New Indian Films (Ashvin Devasundaram) 8 ‘Directed by Hollywood, Edited by China’? Chinese Soft Power, Geo-Imaginaries, and Neo-Orientalism(s) in Recent U.S. Blockbusters (Chris Homewood) 9 ‘Warning! Zombies Ahead…’: Determinate Negation, Predatory Capitalism, and Globalised Place-making (Roxanne Chaitowitz and Shannon Brincat) 10 Popular Geopolitics and the Landscapes of Virtual War (Daniel Bos) Conclusion: Further Conceptualisations of the Interdiscipline List of Contributors Index
Biography
Robert A. Saunders is Professor in History, Politics, and Geography at Farmingdale State College, a campus of the State University of New York (SUNY). His research explores the impact of popular culture and mass media on geopolitics, nationalism, and religious identity. His scholarship has appeared in Progress in Human Geography, Europe-Asia Studies, Slavic Review, Nations and Nationalism, and Geopolitics, among other journals. He is the author of four books, the most recent being Popular Geopolitics and Nation Branding in the Post-Soviet Realm (2017). He is also curator of the ‘Popular Culture and IR’ blog at E-International Relations.
Vlad Strukov is Associate Professor in Film and Digital Culture at the University of Leeds, specialising in world cinemas, visual culture, digital media, intermediality, and cultural theory. He explores theories of empire and nationhood, global journalism and grassroots media, and consumption and celebrity by considering the Russian Federation and the Russian-speaking world as his case study. He is the founding and principal editor of the journal Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media (www.digitalicons.org). He is the author of Contemporary Russian Cinema: Symbols of a New Era (2016), and other publications on film.
