Ebookness

Since the mid-2000s, the ebook has stabilized into an ontologically distinct form, separate from PDFs and other representations of the book on the screen. The current article delineates the ebook from other emerging digital genres with recourse to the methodologies of platform studies and book history. The ebook is modelled as three concentric circles representing its technological, textual and service infrastructure innovations. This analysis reveals two distinct properties of the ebook: a simulation of the services of the book trade and an emphasis on user textual manipulation. The proposed model is tested with reference to comparative studies of several ebooks published since 2007 and defended against common claims of ebookness about other digital textual genres

Freedom in mundane mobilities: caravanning in Denmark

Freedom is a widely discussed and highly elusive concept, and has long been represented in exoticised, masculinised and individualised discourses. Freedom is often exemplified through the image of a solitary male explorer leaving the female space of home and familiarity and going to remote places of the world. Through in-situ interviews with families caravanning in Denmark, the primary aim of this study is to challenge existing dominant discourses surrounding the subject of freedom within leisure and tourism studies. Secondly, we shed further light on an under-researched medium of mobility, that of domestic caravanning. This serves to not only disrupt representations of freedom as occurring through exoticised, masculinised and individualised practices, but to give attention to the domestic, banal contexts where the everyday and tourism intersect, which are often overlooked. This novel repositioning opens up new avenues in tourism studies for critical research into the geographies of freedom in mundane, everyday contexts

Intent to Speed: Cyclical Production, Topicality and the 1950s Hot Rod Movie

This essay tracks the emergence, consolidation and dissolution of the short cycle of hot rod movies that was exhibited from 1956 to 1958. The aim is to explore this cycle’s connection to topical issues and show how filmmakers used timely subjects. The essay examines the media frenzy that whirled around the subculture of hot rodding and the sensationalist marketing strategies used to promote the films, which are linked to exhibition in drive-in theatres. There is an extraordinary mismatch between the thrills promised by the sales pitch for the films and the pedestrian action of the films themselves. While showing intent to speed, few examples of the cycle actually delivered on the promise to thrill. Finally, questions of turnover and the speed of production are considered. What draws these areas of interest together is a series of enquiries about what made hot rods and hot rod culture useful to film producers and audiences