Culture-Bound Syndromes in Popular Culture (Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies)

This volume explores culture-bound syndromes, defined as a pattern of symptoms (mental, physical, and/or relational) experienced only by members of a specific cultural group and recognized as a disorder by members of those groups, and their coverage in popular culture.

Encompassing a wide range of popular culture genres and mediums – from film and TV to literature, graphic novels, and anime – the chapters offer a dynamic mix of approaches to analyze how popular culture has engaged with specific culture-bound syndromes such as hwabyung, hikikomori, taijin kyofusho, zou huo ru mo, sati, amok, Cuban hysteria, voodoo death, and others.

Spanning a global and interdisciplinary remit, this first-of-its-kind anthology will allow scholars and students of popular culture, media and film studies, comparative literature, medical humanities, cultural psychiatry, and philosophy to explore simultaneously a diversity of popular cultures and culturally rooted mental health disorders.

Cringuta Irina Pelea is Lecturer in Communication Studies at Titu Maiorescu University, Romania. Her major research and teaching interests are popular culture, intercultural communication, Japanese studies, and public relations. She is the editor of the present volume, Culture-Bound Syndromes in Popular Culture, and has forthcoming chapters in the volumes Confronting Conformity: Gender Fluidity in Japanese Arts & Culture and Routledge Companion to Literature and Social Justice. She can be followed on Instagram @prof.irina.pelea.