Rethinking Elvis

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).

• 1: Mark Duffett: Elvis: Other Stories to Tell2: James Goff: Elvis Presley and the Irrepressible Influence of Southern Evangelicalism3: Michael T. Bertrand: Old Habits Die Hard: Elvis, or the Burden of a Southern Identity4: Sean Redmond: Mixing Up Elvis5: Cheryl Slay Carr: Elvis, Race, and the Unity of Complementary Genius6: Bertel Nygaard and Rasmus Rosenørn: Hypersensitive Youth and the Meanings of Elvis: Contested Emotions and Senses in 1950s Denmark7: Marilisa Merolla: Elvis Outside the USA: A Dark Shadow in the Early Italian Cultural Cold War8: Mathias Haeussler: An American Cultural Weapon? The Impact of Elvis in 1950s Cold War Europe9: Mark Duffett: Gate People: Fan History Before Elvis Heritage at Graceland10: Johnny Hopkins: The American Dream? Elvis Presley, William Eggleston, and the "Lost" Photographs of Graceland11: Robert Fry: Elvis and Musical Spaces: What the King Means to Nashville Tourism12: Landon Palmer: A Star Is Imagined: The "Unproduction" of Elvis Presley's Film Career13: Dann Downes and June M. Madeley: Posthumous Representations of Elvis: From Cultural Icon to Transproperty14: Amanda Nell Edgar: Operation Blue Suede Shoes: Black Lives Matter and the Meaning of Elvis in Contemporary Memphis15: Mark Duffett: The Future of Elvis Studies

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.