Books

Haunted Nerves keeps plugging along slowly but surely (that summary could use an update). Finished another chapter over the break. The plan is still to have a complete first draft by the end of summer. This is the one I'll be the most personally proud of when its all said and done.

Meanwhile, Blossoms and Blood is officially out. I've set up a FB page in part to help spread the word. Please feel free to like and pass along.

Not sure what else to do at the moment, but I fear it will quickly fall through the cracks without more attention. After all the drama this time last year over the Disney book, its been kind of quiet, too quiet, so far.

Speaking of Disney's Most Notorious Film--its now available in paperback. Its a little more affordable now (btw--UT sets the prices, not me.) Ditto: there's a FB page.

A lot of positive reviews so far. I am particularly fond of the Reynolds article in Pop Matters. I feel it's the one review--good or bad--that really got exactly what the book was trying to do. My gratitude.

• Description|
• Contents|
• Excerpts|
• Author|
• Reviews|

"... Disney's Most Notorious Film: Race, Convergence and the Hidden Histories of Song of the South ... does more than dissect a film and the pros and cons around it. In its own way, it reveals that Song of the South, more or less by accident, holds a mirror to American views on race, with beauty or the lack thereof completely in the eyes of the beholder."
—Mark Reynolds , PopMatters

“This book is extremely smart, painstakingly researched, and it ties together many concepts and issues that too rarely find themselves in the same book. Sperb is a gifted writer, who holds his reader’s attention with skill, and he provides a fantastic piece of work here, one that will serve multiple publics and that fills in important historical territory while also advancing discussions on race, convergence, Disney, film reception, textuality, and remediation. This is really quite a spectacular achievement.”
—Jonathan Gray, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and author of Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts

“Disney’s Most Notorious Film is a tremendously interesting, timely, provocative, and useful project. It is unique in studying reception and fandom through focus on a single, though also importantly dispersed and plural, text of nearly seventy years’ duration and circulation. On its own, Song of the South is a film demanding more analysis than it has received, and Sperb has given it the attention it deserves precisely by focusing on what’s most intriguing about it: its controversial aspects, its unique place in the Disney canon and marketing work, its fans, and the ways its pleasure and affect connect with changing American ideas about race. Perhaps the most important finding of this book is that fan activity—which in contemporary scholarship is most often celebrated for creating new knowledge and engaged producer-consumers—is very complex as it unfolds over time, and that it can have undesirable outcomes.”
—Arthur Knight, Associate Professor of American Studies and English, The College of William and Mary, author of Disintegrating the Musical: African American Performance and American Musical Film and coeditor of Soundtrack Available: Film and Pop Music

"While Sperb's conclusions of conscious racism are debatable, his meticulous documentation of Song of the South merchandising through sixty years and its other cultural references…make Disney's Most Notorious Film an essential reference tool to those interested in SotS-iana."
—Fred Patten, Animation World Network
"This study is meticulously researched and current on contemporary research, and though it reads slowly...the payoff is worth the work. Summing Up: Highly recommended."
—S. R. Kozloff, Vassar College, Choice
"Jason Sperb’s Disney’s Most Notorious Film quickly overcomes any concern that there might be nothing new to say about Song of the South by demonstrating how surprisingly “persistent” the film has been."
—Ryan Jay Friedman, Ohio State University, The Journal of American History

- See more at: http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/spedsn#sthash.CCWHuY6X.dpuf

 

"... Disney's Most Notorious Film: Race, Convergence and the Hidden Histories of Song of the South ... does more than dissect a film and the pros and cons around it. In its own way, it reveals that Song of the South, more or less by accident, holds a mirror to American views on race, with beauty or the lack thereof completely in the eyes of the beholder."
—Mark Reynolds , PopMatters

 "Fascinating . . . As cultural history, this is an impressively researched, convincing argument."
—Jon Lingan, Slate

"Disney’s Most Notorious Film is an engaging book that explores both media strategies and audience responses in thoughtful and fair-minded ways. Sperb’s use of sources ranging from traditional periodicals to Internet fan boards is an added strength in a work that highlights the extent to which cultural products can persist, often in fragments disassociated from their original context, long after their 'time' is thought to have passed."
—Jennifer Ritterhouse, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

“This book is extremely smart, painstakingly researched, and it ties together many concepts and issues that too rarely find themselves in the same book. Sperb is a gifted writer, who holds his reader’s attention with skill, and he provides a fantastic piece of work here, one that will serve multiple publics and that fills in important historical territory while also advancing discussions on race, convergence, Disney, film reception, textuality, and remediation. This is really quite a spectacular achievement.”
—Jonathan Gray, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and author of Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts

“Disney’s Most Notorious Film is a tremendously interesting, timely, provocative, and useful project. It is unique in studying reception and fandom through focus on a single, though also importantly dispersed and plural, text of nearly seventy years’ duration and circulation. On its own, Song of the South is a film demanding more analysis than it has received, and Sperb has given it the attention it deserves precisely by focusing on what’s most intriguing about it: its controversial aspects, its unique place in the Disney canon and marketing work, its fans, and the ways its pleasure and affect connect with changing American ideas about race. Perhaps the most important finding of this book is that fan activity—which in contemporary scholarship is most often celebrated for creating new knowledge and engaged producer-consumers—is very complex as it unfolds over time, and that it can have undesirable outcomes.”
—Arthur Knight, Associate Professor of American Studies and English, The College of William and Mary, author of Disintegrating the Musical: African American Performance and American Musical Film and coeditor of Soundtrack Available: Film and Pop Music

"This study is meticulously researched and current on contemporary research, and though it reads slowly...the payoff is worth the work. Summing Up: Highly recommended."
—S. R. Kozloff, Vassar College, Choice

"Jason Sperb’s Disney’s Most Notorious Film quickly overcomes any concern that there might be nothing new to say about Song of the South by demonstrating how surprisingly “persistent” the film has been."
—Ryan Jay Friedman, Ohio State University, The Journal of American History

• Description|
• Contents|
• Excerpts|
• Author|
• Reviews|

"... Disney's Most Notorious Film: Race, Convergence and the Hidden Histories of Song of the South ... does more than dissect a film and the pros and cons around it. In its own way, it reveals that Song of the South, more or less by accident, holds a mirror to American views on race, with beauty or the lack thereof completely in the eyes of the beholder."
—Mark Reynolds , PopMatters

“This book is extremely smart, painstakingly researched, and it ties together many concepts and issues that too rarely find themselves in the same book. Sperb is a gifted writer, who holds his reader’s attention with skill, and he provides a fantastic piece of work here, one that will serve multiple publics and that fills in important historical territory while also advancing discussions on race, convergence, Disney, film reception, textuality, and remediation. This is really quite a spectacular achievement.”
—Jonathan Gray, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and author of Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts

“Disney’s Most Notorious Film is a tremendously interesting, timely, provocative, and useful project. It is unique in studying reception and fandom through focus on a single, though also importantly dispersed and plural, text of nearly seventy years’ duration and circulation. On its own, Song of the South is a film demanding more analysis than it has received, and Sperb has given it the attention it deserves precisely by focusing on what’s most intriguing about it: its controversial aspects, its unique place in the Disney canon and marketing work, its fans, and the ways its pleasure and affect connect with changing American ideas about race. Perhaps the most important finding of this book is that fan activity—which in contemporary scholarship is most often celebrated for creating new knowledge and engaged producer-consumers—is very complex as it unfolds over time, and that it can have undesirable outcomes.”
—Arthur Knight, Associate Professor of American Studies and English, The College of William and Mary, author of Disintegrating the Musical: African American Performance and American Musical Film and coeditor of Soundtrack Available: Film and Pop Music

"While Sperb's conclusions of conscious racism are debatable, his meticulous documentation of Song of the South merchandising through sixty years and its other cultural references…make Disney's Most Notorious Film an essential reference tool to those interested in SotS-iana."
—Fred Patten, Animation World Network
"This study is meticulously researched and current on contemporary research, and though it reads slowly...the payoff is worth the work. Summing Up: Highly recommended."
—S. R. Kozloff, Vassar College, Choice
"Jason Sperb’s Disney’s Most Notorious Film quickly overcomes any concern that there might be nothing new to say about Song of the South by demonstrating how surprisingly “persistent” the film has been."
—Ryan Jay Friedman, Ohio State University, The Journal of American History

- See more at: http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/spedsn#sthash.CCWHuY6X.dpuf

• Description|
• Contents|
• Excerpts|
• Author|
• Reviews|

"... Disney's Most Notorious Film: Race, Convergence and the Hidden Histories of Song of the South ... does more than dissect a film and the pros and cons around it. In its own way, it reveals that Song of the South, more or less by accident, holds a mirror to American views on race, with beauty or the lack thereof completely in the eyes of the beholder."
—Mark Reynolds , PopMatters

“This book is extremely smart, painstakingly researched, and it ties together many concepts and issues that too rarely find themselves in the same book. Sperb is a gifted writer, who holds his reader’s attention with skill, and he provides a fantastic piece of work here, one that will serve multiple publics and that fills in important historical territory while also advancing discussions on race, convergence, Disney, film reception, textuality, and remediation. This is really quite a spectacular achievement.”
—Jonathan Gray, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and author of Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts

“Disney’s Most Notorious Film is a tremendously interesting, timely, provocative, and useful project. It is unique in studying reception and fandom through focus on a single, though also importantly dispersed and plural, text of nearly seventy years’ duration and circulation. On its own, Song of the South is a film demanding more analysis than it has received, and Sperb has given it the attention it deserves precisely by focusing on what’s most intriguing about it: its controversial aspects, its unique place in the Disney canon and marketing work, its fans, and the ways its pleasure and affect connect with changing American ideas about race. Perhaps the most important finding of this book is that fan activity—which in contemporary scholarship is most often celebrated for creating new knowledge and engaged producer-consumers—is very complex as it unfolds over time, and that it can have undesirable outcomes.”
—Arthur Knight, Associate Professor of American Studies and English, The College of William and Mary, author of Disintegrating the Musical: African American Performance and American Musical Film and coeditor of Soundtrack Available: Film and Pop Music

"While Sperb's conclusions of conscious racism are debatable, his meticulous documentation of Song of the South merchandising through sixty years and its other cultural references…make Disney's Most Notorious Film an essential reference tool to those interested in SotS-iana."
—Fred Patten, Animation World Network
"This study is meticulously researched and current on contemporary research, and though it reads slowly...the payoff is worth the work. Summing Up: Highly recommended."
—S. R. Kozloff, Vassar College, Choice
"Jason Sperb’s Disney’s Most Notorious Film quickly overcomes any concern that there might be nothing new to say about Song of the South by demonstrating how surprisingly “persistent” the film has been."
—Ryan Jay Friedman, Ohio State University, The Journal of American History

- See more at: http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/spedsn#sthash.CCWHuY6X.dpuf