When Highbrow Meets Lowbrow

This book examines nobrow, a cultural formation that intertwines art and entertainment into an identifiable creative force. In our eclectic and culturally turbocharged world, the binary of highbrow vs. lowbrow is incapable of doing justice to the complexity and artistry of cultural production. Until now, the historical power, aesthetic complexity, and social significance of nobrow “artertainment” have escaped analysis. This book rectifies this oversight. Smart, funny, and iconoclastic, it scrutinizes the many faces of nobrow, throwing surprising light on the hazards and rewards of traffic between high entertainment and genre art.

Peter Swirski is Distinguished Professor of American Studies and American Literature. Listed in Canadian Who’s Who, he is a multiple Amazon bestseller in his field and author of sixteen award-winning books, including From Lowbrow to Nobrow (2005) and American Crime Fiction: A Cultural History of Nobrow Literature as Art (2016).Tero Eljas Vanhanen is a researcher and lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Helsinki, Finland. His has published in, among others, Philosophy and Literature, SubStance, and the Journal of American Studies.