Diva

Kirsty Fairclough is Head of Research and Knowledge Exchange and Reader in Screen Studies at the School of Digital Arts (SODA) at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. She is the co-editor of The Music Documentary (2013), The Arena Concert (Bloomsbury, 2015), The Legacy of Mad Men, Music/Video (2019), Prince and Popular Culture (Bloomsbury, 2020) and author of the forthcoming Beyoncé: Celebrity Feminism and Popular Culture. She is the Chair of Manchester Jazz Festival. Benjamin Halligan is the Director of the Doctoral College of the University of Wolverhampton, UK. His publications include Michael Reeves (2003), Desires for Reality: Radicalism and Revolution in Western European Film (2019), and Hotbeds of Licentiousness: The British Glamour Film and the Permissive Society (2022). He has co-edited: Mark E. Smith and The Fall (2010); Reverberations (Bloomsbury, 2012); Resonances (Bloomsbury, 2013); The Music Documentary (2013); The Arena Concert (Bloomsbury, 2016); Stories We Could Tell (2019); Politics of the Many (Bloomsbury, 2021) and Adult Themes (forthcoming). Nicole Hodges Persley is Associate Professor of American, and African American Studies, at the University of Kansas, USA. Her books include Sampling and Remixing Blackness in Hip-Hop Theater and Performance and Black Matters: Lewis Morrow Plays (2021) and, as co-editor, Breaking it Down: Audition Techniques for Actors of the Global Majority and Hip-Hop in Musical Theater (2021). Shara Rambarran is Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton, UK. She is a musicologist for the award-winning Spotify music podcast, Decode, co-runs the Art of Record Production conferences, and is an editor for the Journal on the Art of Record Production. Her publications include Virtual Music: Sound, Music, and Image in the Digital Era (Bloomsbury, 2021) and (as co-editor) The Oxford Handbook of Music and Virtuality (2016), and The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music Education (2020).

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Introduction: ‘Y’All! The Diva and Us’
Kirsty Fairclough, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, Benjamin Halligan, University of Wolverhampton, UK, Nicole Hodges Persley, University of Kansas, USA, and Shara Rambarran, University of Brighton, UK
Section One: The Rise to Power
1. “Proceed with Caution”: Mariah Carey – the Ultimate Diva in Popular Music and Culture?
Shara Rambarran, University of Brighton, UK
2.Performing Creative Labour: Whitney Houston Metanarratives on MTV, 1985-1988
Gwynne George, Independent Scholar, USA
3. A Girl of Many Colours: Dolly Parton’s Image Evolution, 1967-2022
James Reeves, Independent Scholar, UK
4. A Fondness for Shock: The Celebrated Outburst of Grace Jones
Mark Duffett, University of Chester, UK
Section Two: The Diva and Our Times
5. Aaliyah’s Voice and After
Benjamin Halligan, University of Wolverhampton, UK
6. “Suck On My Balls, Bitch!”: #MeToo and Beyoncé – A Paradigm Shift
Hannah Strong, Independent Scholar, USA
7. Amuro Namie: Japan’s Diva in the Postmodern Era?
Dorothy Finan, Independent Scholar, UK
8. Reconstructing the American Dream: Janelle Monáe’s Afrofuturist Performances
Timmia Hearn DeRoy, Independent Scholar, USA
9. “WAP”: Erotic Revolutionary Hip-Hop by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion
Shawna Shipley-Gates, Independent Scholar, USA
10. Putting the Divas Back in Their Place: Controversy and Backlash at the 2020 Super Bowl Halftime Show
Gina Sandí Díaz, California State University, USA
11. Simultaneously Black: Drake and Nicki Minaj and the Performance of Hip-Hip Cosmopolitanisms
Nicole Hodges Persley, University of Kansas, USA
Section Three: Diva Cultures
12. Curating the Diva
Harriet Reed, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK
13. A Diva on the Iranian Stage: Ali Akbar Alizad’s Remix of Jean Genet’s The Maids
Rana Esfandiary, University of Kansas, USA
14. Recasting Diva Culture: Performative Strategies of Fourth Wave Black Feminist Stand-Up Comedy
Rachel E. Blackburn, Independent Scholar, USA
15. Independent Women: The Impact of Pop Divas on Stand-Up Comedy
Ellie Tomsett, Birmingham City University, UK, and Nathalie Weidhase, University of Surrey, UK
Index