When Highbrow Meets Lowbrow

This book examines nobrow, a cultural formation that intertwines art and entertainment into an identifiable creative force. In our eclectic and culturally turbocharged world, the binary of highbrow vs. lowbrow is incapable of doing justice to the complexity and artistry of cultural production. Until now, the historical power, aesthetic complexity, and social significance of nobrow "artertainment" have escaped analysis. This book rectifies this oversight. Smart, funny, and iconoclastic, it scrutinizes the many faces of nobrow, throwing surprising light on the hazards and rewards of traffic between high entertainment and genre art.

Peter Swirski is Distinguished Professor of American Studies and American Literature. Listed in Canadian Who's Who, he is a multiple Amazon bestseller in his field and author of sixteen award-winning books, including From Lowbrow to Nobrow (2005) and American Crime Fiction: A Cultural History of Nobrow Literature as Art (2016). Tero Eljas Vanhanen is a researcher and lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Helsinki, Finland. His has published in, among others, Philosophy and Literature, SubStance, and the Journal of American Studies.

1. Introduction - Browbeaten into Pulp: Nobrow Positions and Oppositions; Peter Swirski and Tero Eljas Vanhanen.- 2. Pop Culture and Nobrow Culture - From Li'l Abner to Discourse Theory and Back: A Culture Critic's Odyssey; Arthur Berger.- 3. Nobrow, American Style: From Goldilocks to the Golden Mean; Peter Swirski.- 4. Middlebrow and Nobrow: Tracing Patterns Across Culture; Beth Driscoll.- 5. Prequels to Nobrow: Battles of the Brows from Socrates to Cervantes; Kenneth Krabbenhoft.- 6. Gothic Literature in America: The Nobrow Aesthetics of Murder and Madness.- Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet.- 7. Neither Indian Reservation Nor Baboon Patriarchy: Science Fiction as Nobrow Phenomenon; Nicholas Ruddick.- 8. Mambo Clothing and Australian Nobrow: Wearable Art for a Global Audience; Christopher McAuliffe.- 9. Guilty Pleasures, orNobrow Treasures? Popular Judgment and the Affective Economy of Taste; David McAvoy.- 10. The Good, the Bad, and the Nobrow: Structures of Taste and Distaste in the Nobrow Age; Tero Eljas Vanhanen.- Bibliography.- Index.-