This book is a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary examination of the music and figure of Lady Gaga, combining approaches from scholars in cultural studies, art, fashion, and music. It represents one of the first scholarly volumes devoted to Lady Gaga, who has become, over a few short years, central to both popular (and, indeed, populist) as well as more scholarly thought in these areas and who, the contributors argue, is helping to shape-directly and indirectly-thought and culture both in the fields of the "scholarly" and the "everyday." Lady Gaga's output is firmly embedded in a self-consciously intellectual pop culture tradition, and her music videos are intertextually linked to icons of pop culture intelligentsia like Alfred Hitchcock and open to multiple interpretations. In examining her music and figure, this volume contributes both to debates on the status of intertextuality, held in tension with originality, and to debates on the figuring of the sexualized female body, and representations of disability. There is interest in these issues from a wide range of disciplines: popular musicology, film studies, queer studies, women's studies, gender studies, disability studies, popular culture studies, and the burgeoning sub-discipline of aesthetics and philosophy of fashion.
This book is a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary examination of the music and figure of Lady Gaga, combining approaches from scholars in cultural studies, art, fashion, and music, and contributing to popular musicology, film studies, queer studies, popular culture studies, and the burgeoning sub-discipline of aesthetics, philosophy of fashion. It visits both to pop cultural debates on the status of intertextuality, held in tension with originality, and to debates in women's and gender studies on the figuring of the sexualized female body.
"The 12 essays in the volume demonstrate not only that Lady Gaga's work can be read in a number of different ways, but that there are many aspects of her music, persona, and cultural impact worth examining. Essays in the volume also do an excellent job of situating Gaga in a variety of cultural contexts?[they] work together to form a complete, nuanced look at not only Gaga's music, performances, and videos, but her role in popular culture?the volume provides scholars hoping to better understand Gaga's place in popular culture with a rich collection of essays to draw from." --Molly Brost, University of Southern Indiana, Popular Music and Society
