Overview
- Offers the first extended academic analysis of Steven Universe
- Addresses issues of gender, sexuality, audience, the body, hybridity, genre, culture, and politics that arise in Steven Universe
- Utilizes a variety of critical-theoretical perspectives, from queer theory to media theory to postcolonial theory
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Table of contents (11 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This book assembles ten scholarly examinations of the politics of representation in the groundbreaking animated children’s television series Steven Universe. These analyses address a range of representational sites and subjects, including queerness, race, fandom, colonialism, and the environment, and provide an accessible foundation for further scholarship. The introduction contextualizes Steven Universe in the children’s science-fiction and anime traditions and discusses the series’ crucial mechanic of fusion. Subsequent chapters probe the fandom’s expressions of queer identity, approach the series’ queer force through the political potential of the animated body, consider the unequal privilege of different female characters, and trace the influence of anime director Kunihiko Ikuhara. Further chapters argue that Ronaldo allows satire of multiple media forms, focus on Onion as a surrealist trickster, and contemplate cross-species hybridity and consent. The final chapters concentrate on background art in connection with ecological and geological narratives, adopt a decolonial perspective on the Gems’ legacy, and interrogate how the tension between personal and cultural narratives constantly recreates memory.
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
John R. Ziegler (Bronx Community College, CUNY, USA), an Assistant Professor of English, has published on early modern English literature, ghosts, and zombies.
Leah Richards (LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, USA), an Associate Professor of English, has published on Dracula and Land of the Dead. Together, they review theater for thinking Theater NYC and Culture Catch and edit the journal Supernatural Studies.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Representation in Steven Universe
Editors: John R. Ziegler, Leah Richards
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31881-9
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-31880-2Published: 10 January 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-31883-3Published: 26 August 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-31881-9Published: 09 January 2020
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVI, 260
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations, 21 illustrations in colour
Topics: Popular Culture , Animation, Culture and Gender, Close Reading, Media and Communication