Covering Niagara: Studies in Local Popular Culture

Covering Niagara: Studies in Local Popular Culture closely examines some of the myriad forms of popular culture in the Niagara region of Canada. Essays consider common assumptions and definitions of what popular culture is and seek to determine whether broad theories of popular culture can explain or make sense of localized instances of popular culture and the cultural experiences of people in their daily lives. Among the many topics covered are local bicycle parades and war memorials, cooking and wine culture, radio and movie-going, music stores and music scenes, tourist sites, and blackface minstrel shows. The authors approach their subjects from a variety of critical and historical perspectives and employ a range of methodologies that includes cultural studies, textual analysis, archival research, and participant interviews. Altogether, Covering Niagara provides a richly diverse mapping of the popular culture of a particular area of Canada and demonstrates the complexities of everyday culture.

Joan Nicks is an adjunct professor in the Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film at Brock University. She is co-editor with Jeannette Sloniowski of Slippery Pastimes: Reading the Popular in Canadian Culture (WLU Press, 2002). Her writing on film and popular culture has appeared in Candid Eyes: Essays on Canadian Documentaries (2003), Gendering the Nation: Canadian Women’s Cinema (1999), Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video (1998), and various journals.

Barry Keith Grant is a professor of film studies and popular culture at Brock University. He is the author or editor of twenty books, including 100 Documentary Films (with Jim Hillier, 2009), Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader (2007), Film Genre: Film Iconography to Ideology (2007), Film Genre Reader (2003) and The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film (1996), and his work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He edits the Contemporary Approaches to Film and Television series for Wayne State University Press and the New Approaches to Film Genre series for Wiley Blackwell.