Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces

Samantha Holland is Senior Research Fellow at Leeds Beckett University, UK. Her research focuses on gender, leisure, subcultures, popular culture, ageing and homes. She is the author of Alternative Femininities, Pole Dancing, Empowerment & Embodiment and Modern Vintage Home & Leisure Lives: Ghosts & Glamour. She is series editor of Emerald Studies in Popular Culture & Gender, and series co-editor (with Karl Spracklen) of Emerald Studies in Alternativity & Marginalisation.Karl Spracklen is Professor of Music, Leisure and Culture at Leeds Beckett University, UK. He is the Editor of the journal Metal Music Studies, as well as International Journal of the Sociology of Leisure. He is interested in leisure and identity, and has published over a hundred papers, books, textbooks and book chapters in that broad area. His most recent work has been focused on music, alternativity, hegemony and transgression.

• Introduction; Samantha Holland and Karl Spracklen Section I: Subcultures1.Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Dressed in Street Fashions?: Investigating Virtually Constructed Fashion Subcultures; Theresa M. Winge 2.Cursed is the Fruit of Thy Womb: Inversion/Subversion and the Inscribing of Morality on Women's Bodies in Heavy Metal; Amanda DiGioia and Dr. Charlotte Naylor Davis 3.Japanophilia in Kuwait: How Far Does International Culture Penetrate?; Thorsten Botz-Bornstein 4.Misogyny as an Artistic Tool in the Construction of '80s Glam Metal's Aesthetics: An Alternative Perspective; Gareth Heritage 5.Reight Mardy Tykes: Gothic/Doom Metal as an Act of English Northernness; M. Selim Yavuz Section II: Bodies 6.Unwritten Rules and Societal Norms of Tattooed Female Bodies; Charlotte Dann 7. 'Tattooed and Beautiful?': Tattoo Collecting and Embodied Gender Deviance; Beverly Yuen Thompson 8.Russian Feminisms, Queer Activism and the Western Gaze: Female Bodies Between Spectacles and Celebration, Victimizations and (Self-)Marginalization; M. Katharina Wiedlack 9.Out of Time: Anohni and Transgendered/Transage Transgression; Abigail Gardner 10.Irrational Perspectives and Untenable Positions: Sociology, 'Mental Illness' and 'Dis'ability; Kay Inckle Section III: Spaces 11.Ageing Alternative Women: Discourses of Authenticity, Resistance and 'Coolness'; Samantha Holland 12.Girls to the Front? Gender and Alternative Spaces; Laura Way 13."In the Land of Grey and Pink": Popular Music Alternativity in the Lived and Imagined City of Canterbury 2017; Asya Draganova and Shane Blackman Conclusion: Making Sense of Alternativity in Leisure and Culture: Back to Sub-Culture?; Karl Spracklen

In this collection of essays, contributors in cultural studies, feminist theory, psychology, philosophy, music, cultural sociology, and American studies analyze issues and directions in studying alternative cultures. Most contributors are women, and most promote the advantages of using feminist approaches to study subcultures, scenes, and other manifestations of alternative popular cultures in America and other countries. Some subjects addressed include fashion subcultures, madness and disability, aging alternative women, regulation of tattooed female bodies, and women’s bodies in heavy metal. B&w photos are included.