A Women’s History of the Beatles

Abstract

A Women’s History of the Beatles is the first book to offer a detailed presentation of the band’s social and cultural impact as understood through the experiences and lives of women. Drawing on a mix of interviews, archival research, textual analysis, and autoethnography, this scholarly work depicts how the Beatles have profoundly shaped and enriched the lives of women, while also reexamining key, influential female figures within the group’s history. Organized topically based on key themes important to the Beatles story, each chapter uncovers the varied and multifaceted relationships women have had with the band, whether face-to-face and intimately or parasocially through mediated, popular culture. Set within a socio-historical context that charts changing gender norms since the early 1960s, these narratives consider how the Beatles have affected women’s lives across three generations. Providing a fresh perspective of a well-known tale, this is a cultural history that moves far beyond the screams of Beatlemania to offer a more comprehensive understanding of what the now iconic band has meant to women over the course of six decades.

Provocation and Diminished Capacity in Nordic Criminal Law: Two Rationales for Mitigating Crimes of Violence Committed in an Agitated State of Mind

“…Numerous authors have argued that there is no inherent contradiction between rationality and emotion. 39 Neither does emotion in general automatically lead to certain actions. 40 At most, emotions are viewed as something that entails a preference or preparation to commit certain actions.…”

“…65 Instead, she emphasises that variation is the norm for emotions and that the most visible commonality of all emotional instances called 'anger' is the very naming of them. 66 Even putting aside this perspective, the crucial question revolves around when criminal law should consider it a mitigating circumstance that the offender has followed an impulse of aggression. Concerning this question, it can be noted that researchers have observed a change in the use and perception of violence.…”

Stereotypes in media representations of boy bands and their fans

“…As Grady (2021) says, "To be a teenage girl is to simultaneously be pop culture's ultimate punching bag, cash cow, and gatekeeper" (5). Things didn't start out this way; the Beatles had a close relationship with their female fans and took them quite seriously (Feldman-Barrett, 2021).…”

‘There are places I remember’

“…For sadly it has become a "show-case" for everything that has gone wrong in Britain's major cities' (quoted in Coleman 2004: 105). The 'fence' called for by this journalist was never built; however, their suggestion of making a spectacle of the city came to pass in a way, since largely as a result of the intervention of the unofficial 'Minister for Merseyside' Michael Heseltine, and in the aftermath of John Lennon's death, Liverpool's future was identified as its becoming a centre of culture, leisure and tourism (Crick 1997;Robson 1988;Lawless 1989;Couch 2003;Tulloch 2011;Feldman-Barrett 2021).…”