Madonna is perhaps one of the most consistently transgressive and self-transforming artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The recent release of two critically acclaimed and best-selling albums and a sold-out world tour have renewed media and academic interest in the artist. Madonna presents a set of strikingly new challenges to cultural analysis, and new developments in Gender, Queer and Ethnic studies have shed more light on her entire oeuvre. Whilst the contributors do refer to classic cultural theorists such as Baudrillard, Zizek, Foucault and Barthes, new theoretical approaches to Madonna's work feature prominently. In view of this, the present volume offers new perspectives on Madonna's work to date, addressing her configurations of race, gender and sex(uality) and with special emphasis on her resurrection after the Sex backlash in the early 1990s. The collection focuses on new Madonna-related topics such as Hinduism, Judaism, Japanese culture, All-American culture, Queer culture, Motherhood and her influence on newer 'girl acts' such as the Spice Girls and Britney Spears. The book explores the themes of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and celebrity consumption through the lens of Madonna's songs, videos and shows. An international array of scholars portrays Madonna's popularisation of the notion that identity is not fixed and can be continuously rearranged and revamped. The book should have wide appeal for all those concerned with gender studies, cultural studies, ethnic studies, lesbian and gay musicology as well as popular music studies.

Contents: Who's That Girl?: Introduction: Re-invention? Madonna's drowned worlds resurface, Santiago Fouz-Hernández and Freya Jarman-Ivens. Part I The Girlie Show: Gender Identities: Dragging out camp: narrative agendas in Madonna's musical production, Stan Hawkins; Madonna's girls in the mix: performance of femininity beyond the beautiful, Patricia Pisters; Where is the female body? Androgyny and other strategies of disappearance in Madonna's music videos, Corinna Herr. Part II Post-Virgin: Sexual Identities: Queer hearing and the Madonna queen, Keith E. Clifton; What it feels like for two girls: Madonna's play with lesbian (sub-)cultures, Freya Jarman-Ivens. Part III Drowned Worlds: Ethnic Identities: East is hot! 'Madonna's Indian Summer' and the poetics of appropriation, Michael Angelo Tata; Re-worlding the oriental: critical perspectives on Madonna as geisha, Rahul Gairola; The day the music died laughing: Madonna and Country, Sean Albiez; Crossing the border(line): Madonna's encounter with the Hispanic, Santiago Fouz-Hernández. Part IV Blond Ambition: Consuming Celebrity: Madonna's daughters: girl power and the empowered girl-pop breakthrough, David Gauntlett; Consuming Madonna then and now: an examination of the dynamics and structuring of celebrity consumption, Lisa Peñaloza. Bibliography; Index.