In Rethinking Elvis, popular music scholars and historians look beyond Elvis' iconography to shine a light on the branding, historical and geographic reception, heritage, and fan phenomenon that sustain his legacy. By engaging with recent disciplinary shifts and ongoing conversations within the field, Rethinking Elvis pinpoints the many reasons for Elvis' continued influence on popular culture.
Decades after his passing, Elvis Presley remains one of popular music's greatest icons. He was among the most successful, influential, socially significant, and controversial performers of the twentieth century, with a celebrity so indelible that every recent American president has negotiated its orbit. While much of the coverage of Elvis' life concerns his personal history and musical ability, Rethinking Elvis pushes beyond the familiar to address Elvis' branding, historical and geographic reception, heritage, and fan phenomenon. Using Elvis' iconography as a point of departure, popular music scholars and historians contend with issues related to the performer's whiteness, Southern identity, and gender, among others, in turn offering myriad opportunities to pursue new approaches in the emergent field of Elvis studies.
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The academics here do not rethink Elvis Presley so much as re-place him: the view from Denmark and Cold War Europe meeting today's Tennessee Presley, where 'Are You Lonesome' is sung in the dark for tourists in Nashville's Studio B and Memphis cops brutally repress a Black Lives Matter protest in front of Graceland. Greil Marcus's Mystery Train listed Elvis variants as an act of prose wizardry. This Bubba Ho-Tep-worthy book of 'unproductions' catalogs a Presley multiverse, with movies never made, stories half-attributed, and identities barely glimpsed. * Eric Weisbard, Author of Hound Dog * Rethinking Elvis gives us a distinctly 21st-century version of Elvis, filtered through the lens of contemporary racial justice movements and the ongoing globalization of popular music. Highly readable, Rethinking Elvis takes Elvis fans as seriously as the artist himself and strikes a perfect balance between Elvis-as-myth and Elvis as all-too-human. An essential volume on an enduring icon. * Steve Waksman, Author of Live Music in America: A History from Jenny Lind to Beyoncé * This insightful anthology provides multiple ways to rethink Elvis. Its essays offer novel ways to explore an icon through a wealth of disciplinary perspectives. Most important, by finally taking Elvis seriously as a site of academic analysis, they are a call to action for scholars that is long overdue. * Norma Coates, Associate Professor of Music, University of Western Ontario * If T. Rex is the king of dinosaurs, then E. Rex is the king of popular music icons. Rethinking Elvis is a Jurassic Park-like educational journey into the newest Presley-focused scholarship. Mark Duffett and his talented team of pop culture paleontologists unearth several vital new perspectives on American rock 'n' roll's most influential singer and the world's most underappreciated celebrity. * B. Lee Cooper, Author of Audio Euphoria *
1. Elvis - Other Stories to Tell, Mark Duffett
2. Elvis Presley and the Irrepressible Influence of Southern Evangelicalism,
James Goff
3. Old Habits Die Hard - Elvis, or the Burden of a Southern Identity, Michael
T. Bertrand
4. Mixing Up Elvis, Sean Redmond
5. Elvis, Race, and the Unity of Complimentary Genius, Cheryl S. Carr
6. Hypersensitive Youth and the Meanings of Elvis in 1950s Denmark, Bertel
Nygaard and Rasmus Rosenørn
7. Elvis Outside the USA - A Dark Shadow in the Early Italian Cultural Cold
War, Marilisa Merolla
8. An American Cultural Weapon? The Impact of Elvis in 1950s Cold War Europe,
Mathias Haeussler
9. Gate People - Fan History Before Elvis Heritage at Graceland, Mark
Duffett
10. The American Dream? Elvis Presley, William Eggleston and the "Lost"
Photographs of Graceland, Johnny Hopkins
11. Elvis and Musical Spaces - What the King means to Nashville Tourism,
Robert Fry
12. A Star is Imagined - The "Unproduction" of Elvis Presley's Film Career,
Landon Palmer
13. Posthumous Representations of Elvis - From Cultural Icon to
Transproperty, June M. Madeley and Daniel Downes
14. Operation Blue Suede Shoes - Black Lives Matter and the Meaning of Elvis
in Contemporary Memphis, Amanda Nell Edgar
15. The Future of Elvis Studies, Mark Duffett
Index
Mark Duffett is Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Chester. After receiving degrees from Oxford University and the University of British Columbia, he completed his doctorate on Elvis fandom at the University of Wales in 1999. Since then, Dr. Duffett has established himself as an international scholar with keynotes at conferences in Finland, Portugal, and La Nouvelle Sorbonne in Paris. He has written for The Guardian, and been quoted in Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and The New York Times. His books include Understanding Fandom (2013), Counting Down Elvis (2018), and Elvis: Roots, Image, Comeback, Phenomenon (2020).
