Pops in Pop Culture

The definitions of fatherhood have shifted in the twenty-first century as paternal subjectivities, conflicts, and desires have registered in new ways in the contemporary family. This collection investigates these sites of change through various lenses from popular culture - film, television, blogs, best-selling fiction and non-fiction, stand-up comedy routines, advertisements, newspaper articles, parenting guide-books, and video games. Treating constructions of the father at the nexus of patriarchy, gender, and (post)feminist philosophy, contributors analyze how fatherhood is defined in relation to masculinity and femininity, and the shifting structures of the heteronormative nuclear family. Perceptions of the father as the traditional breadwinner and authoritarian as compared to a more engaged and involved nurturer are considered via representations of fathers from the US, Canada, Britain, Australia, South Africa, and Sweden.

Elizabeth Podnieks is Associate Professor of English and the Graduate Program in Communication and Culture at Ryerson University, Canada. She is the author of Daily Modernism: The Literary Diaries of Virginia Woolf, Antonia White, Elizabeth Smart, and Anaïs Nin (2000); the co-editor of Textual Mothers/Maternal Texts: Motherhood in Contemporary Women’s Literatures (2009); and the editor of Mediating Moms: Mothers in Popular Culture (2012), awarded the Outstanding Scholarship (2012-2013) Prize by the Canadian Women’s and Gender Studies et Recherches Féministes. She is the Area Chair (2012-ongoing) for the Motherhood/Fatherhood Area of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association.

"The essays that comprise Pops in Pop Culture work together to make a valuable intervention in studies of fatherhood across a broad spectrum of forms of popular media and contemporary culture, and in a range of different national and cultural contexts. Taking a cross-media approach, the essays differently interrogate and contextualize symptomatic examples of cultures of fatherhood from popular film, serial television, situation comedy, advertising, videogames, literary fiction, and more. It is a timely and welcome addition to scholarship on mediated masculinities." - Hannah Hamad, Senior Lecturer, Media Studies, University of East Anglia, UK
"The essays that comprise Pops in Pop Culture work together to make a valuable intervention in studies of fatherhood across a broad spectrum of forms of popular media and contemporary culture, and in a range of different national and cultural contexts. Taking a cross-media approach, the essays differently interrogate and contextualize symptomatic examples of cultures of fatherhood from popular film, serial television, situation comedy, advertising, videogames, literary fiction, and more. It is a timely and welcome addition to scholarship on mediated masculinities." - Hannah Hamad, Senior Lecturer, Media Studies, University of East Anglia, UK