Hipster Culture: Transnational and Intersectional Perspectives

About the Author Heike Steinhoff is Junior Professor of American Studies at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. She is the author of Transforming Bodies: Makeovers and Monstrosities in American Culture (2015) and Queer Buccaneers: (De)Constructing Boundaries in the Pirates of the Caribbean Film Series (2011). She has also published articles on representations of the body, gender, sexuality, and space in American literature and film. Product Description Twenty-first century popular culture has given birth to a peculiar cultural figure: the hipster. Stereotypically associated with nerd glasses, beards and buns, boho clothing, and ironic T-shirts, hipsters represent a (post-)postmodern (post-)subculture whose style, aesthetics, and practices have increasingly become mainstream. Hipster Culture is the first comprehensive collection of original studies that address the hipster and hipster culture from a range of cultural studies perspectives. Analyzing the cultural, economic, aesthetic, and political meanings and implications of a wide range of phenomena prominently associated with hipster culture, the contributors bring their expertise and own research perspectives to bear, thus shaping the volume's transnational and intersectional approach. Chapters address global and local manifestations of hipster culture, processes of urban gentrification and cultural appropriation, alternative foodways and eclectic fashion styles, the significance of nostalgia, retro technologies and social media, and the aesthetics and cultural politics of literature, film, art, and music marked by self-reflexivity, irony, and a simultaneous longing for an earnest authenticity. Hipster Culture explores the diversification of hipster culture, sheds light on popular constructions of the hipster as cultural Other, and critically investigates hipster culture's entanglements with and challenges to dominant cultural discourses of gender, ethnicity, race, sexuality, age, religion, and nationality. Review “This collection embraces a true cultural studies approach to the figure of the hipster. Covering everything from foodways to fashion, the collection situates the hipster's unique place in American subculture, while simultaneously placing the hipster in larger global contexts. Of note is the collection's intersectional approach to the topic, exploring the hipster from a number of gendered, sexual, and religious perspectives, expanding the uses of this collection to broader studies of identity, consumption, and consumerism.” ―Jenn Brandt, author of An Introduction to Popular Culture in the US (co-authored with Callie Clare, 2018)“This is a worthwhile study that fills a gap in the existing literature on hipsters by looking at the subject from various perspectives. By drawing attention to hipster involvement in identity politics, fashion, food, literature and visual culture, the book covers some new ground while adding to existing studies, and viewing the hipster beyond the lens of western culture is a particular strength. Very interesting and timely - a valuable resource for anyone teaching cultural studies, sociology, fashion history and theory, media studies and more.” ―Georgina Gregory, Senior Lecturer in Media and Film, University of Central Lancashire, UK