Full Description
Everybody knows, and maybe even loves, a microgenre. Plague romances and mommy memoirs. Nudie-cutie movies, Nazi zombies, and dinosaur erotica. Baby burlesks, Minecraft fiction, grindcore, premature ejaculation poetry...microgenres come in all varieties and turn up in every form of media under the sun, tailor-made for enthusiasts of all walks of life.
Coming into use in the last decade or so, the term "microgenre" classifies increasingly niche-marketed worlds in popular music, fiction, television, and the Internet. Netflix has recently highlighted our fascination with the ultra-niche genre with hilariously specific classifications -- "independent supernatural dramedy featuring a strong female lead" - that can sometimes hit a little too close to home. Each contribution in this collection introduces readers to a different microgenre, drawn from a range of historical periods and from a variety of media. The Microgenre presents a previously untreated point of cultural curiosity, revealing the profound truth that humanity's desire to classify is often only matched by the unsustainability of the obscure and hyper-specific. It also affirms, in colorful detail, what most people suspect but have trouble fathoming in an increasingly homogenized and commercial West: that imaginative projects are just that, imaginative, diverse, and sometimes completely and hilariously inexplicable.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction (Molly C. O'Donnell, James Madison University, USA and Anne H. Stevens, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA)
Chapter 1
The Myron's Cow Epigraph (Paul Hay, Western Reserve University, USA)
Chapter 2
The Premature Ejaculation Poem (Christopher Vilmar, Salisbury University, USA)
Chapter 3
Prostitute Narratives of Ancien Régime France (Alistaire Tallent, Colorado College, USA)
Chapter 4
The Neoclassical Plague Romance (Matthew Duques, University of North Alabama, USA)
Chapter 5
Anesthesia Fiction (Jennifer Diann Jones, University of Portsmouth, USA)
Chapter 6
Magic-Portrait Fiction (Diana Bellonby, Vanderbilt University, USA)
Chapter 7
Topographical Reports of the American Frontier (John Hay, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA)
Chapter 8
Grangerism (Megan Becker-Leckrone, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA)
Chapter 9
Shirley Temple's "Baby Burlesks" (Nora Gilbert, University of North Texas, USA)
Chapter 10
Nudie-Cuties (Cynthia J. Miller, Emerson College, USA, and Thomas M. Shaker, independent scholar)
Chapter 11
Giallo (Gavin F. Hurley, University of Providence, USA)
Chapter 12
Nuclear Realism (John Carl Baker, Nuclear Field Coordinator and Senior Program Officer, Ploughshares Fund)
Chapter 13
Anti-Sitcom Video Art (Susanna Newbury, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA)
Chapter 14
Home Depot Art (Danielle Kelly, Lake Forest College, USA)
Chapter 15
The Mommy Memoir (Mary Thompson, James Madison University, USA)
Chapter 16
Minecraft Fiction (Michael T. Wilson, Appalachian State University, USA)
Chapter 17
Heavy Metal Microgenres (Heather Lusty, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA)
Chapter 18
Mexican Neo-Surf Microgenres (Aurelio Meza, Concordia University, Canada)
Chapter 19
Fanfiction Microgenres (Elyse Graham, Stony Brook University, USA and Michelle Alexis Taylor, Harvard University, USA)
Chapter 20
Machine-Classified Microgenres (Jonathan Goodwin, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA)
Notes on Contributors
Index
