Michael John Prince

• Prince, Michael John (2023). What Would Preacher Do? Tactics of Blasphemy in the Strategies of Satire and Parody, Comics, Culture, and Religion Faith Imagined. Bloomsbury Academic. ISSN 9781350321588. p. 89–106. doi: 10.5040/9781350321618.ch-006. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s sixty-six-issue graphic novel series Preacher is blasphemous. Scream it from the rooftops, post it behind a sputtering red Cessna on an aerial advertising banner, and be sure to mention it in your Amazon customer review, as hundreds have (Maxfield 2012). Of course, some of the reviewers hem and haw, admitting a guilty pleasure that, in spite of being Evangelical Christians, devout Methodists, or Roman Catholics, they actually enjoyed reading Preacher, could not put it down. Others cannot resist making a teaching moment of their two-star review, pointing out that, all in all, Preacher is lousy theology. “Ennis and Dillon hold religion in undisguised contempt. Therefore, they don’t realize the questions they raise are centuries old, or that their characters are little more complex than paper dolls. They just hold the characters, and their faith, up to mockery and derision, and think they’ve created a story” (Nenstiel 2021). Even serious scholarship is not immune to righteous indignation: “Here, Ennis’ Northern Irish Protestantism (even if latent) comes to the fore. Ennis expresses himself as an outraged Puritan, implying that it is better to destroy than to allow contamination (whether societal or religious) to continue” (Grimshaw 2010, 153). Now, given that the Entertainment Weekly review blurb on the Amazon page endorses it with “features more blood and blasphemy than any mainstream comic in memory. Cool,” one is hard pressed to avoid the suspicion that a good-sized chunk of the comics reading public just cannot take a joke.

• Prince, Michael John (2022). Microdystopias and the Encoded Uncanny in Ira Levin & Rick and Morty. In Grønstad, Asbjørn & Johannessen, Lene Marite (Ed.), Microdystopias : Aesthetics and ideologies in a broken moment. Lexington Books. ISSN 9781666929423. p. 57–79. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael John (2022). Textual and Musical Aspects of Satire in Irving Berlin's "Stay Down Here Where You Belong" and Frank Zappa's "Billy the Mountain". In Karlsen, Ole & Markussen, Bjarne (Ed.), Sanglyrikk. Teori - Metode - Sjangrer. Scandinavian Academic Press. ISSN 9788230403426. p. 173–204. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Lyrikken er den mest populære og utbredte av alle diktarter – vel å merke sanglyrikken, den som fremføres til musikk og formidles gjennom radio, grammofonplater, CD-er og strømmetjenester. Den omgir oss til daglig og er samtidig den eldste formen for lyrikk vi kjenner til. I det gamle Hellas ble diktene fremsagt til lyrespill. Til tross for dette har sanglyrikken vært mindre utforsket enn skriftlyrikken, og det har skortet på teoretiske og metodiske perspektiver. Det søker denne boka å råde bot på. Her diskuteres først de grunnleggende likheter og forskjeller mellom skrift- og sanglyrikk, mellom øye- og ørekunst. Videre drøftes metodiske innfallsvinkler til studiet av sanglyrikk, med tanke på samspillet mellom ord og musikk. Deretter gjør boka rede for en rekke kjente sanglyriske sjangrer: ballader, skillingsviser, salmer, joik, viser, blues, rock, indie-folk og rap. Boka er den første i sitt slag i Norge. Den er særlig rettet mot forskere og studenter i høyere utdanning, og lærere som vil arbeide med sanglyrikk i skoleverket. Men alle som interesserer seg for sanglyrikkens sjangrer, vil finne noe å glede seg over her.

• Prince, Michael John (2021). Bob Dylans John Wesley Harding. Skillingsviser og sosialbanditter etter kjærlighetssommeren. In Brandtzæg, Siv Gøril & Markussen, Bjarne (Ed.), Arven fra skillingsvisene. Fra en sal på hospitalet til en sofa fra IKEA. Scandinavian Academic Press. ISSN 9788230402979. p. 285–310. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael John (2018). Beat Refrains:Music, Milieu and Identity in Jack Kerouac's The Subterraneans, the Motro-Goldwyn-Mayer Film Adaptation. In Warner, Simon & Sampas, Jim (Ed.), Kerouac on record: a literary soundtrack. Bloomsbury Academic. ISSN 9781501323348. p. 111–121. doi: 10.5040/9781501323386.ch-007. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael John (2017). The magic of patriarchal oppression in Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. ISSN 2150-4857. doi: 10.1080/21504857.2017.1307241. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael John (2017). Bob Dylans tvetydige litteratur. Er hans kunstneriske produksjon Nobels litteraturpris verdig? In Jahr, Ernst Håkon; Knutson, Inger Johanne Håland; Nossum, Rolf Tomas & Breen, Olav (Ed.), Agder Vitenskapsakademi - Årbok 2016. Portal forlag. ISSN 9788283141535. p. 260–265. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael (2016). The myth of the American West, "Manifest Destiny," and the frontier. In Dallmann, Antje; Boesenberg, Eva & Klepper, Martin (Ed.), Approaches to American Cultural Studies. Routledge. ISSN 9780415720854. p. 71–80. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael John (2015). (Re)visioning America in the Graphic Novel: Introduction. European Journal of American Studies. 10(2). doi: 10.4000/ejas.10862. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael John (2015). Why is Marylou Reading Proust? Intertextuality and Metatextuality in Salles and Rivera's On the Road (2012). In Forsgren, Frida & Prince, Michael (Ed.), Out of the Shadows. Beat Women are not Beaten Women. Portal forlag. ISSN 9788283140590. p. 167–178. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael (2015). Whose side are you on?: Negotiations between individual liberty and collective responsibility in Millar and McNivens Marvel Civil War. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. ISSN 2150-4857. 6(2), p. 182–192. doi: 10.1080/21504857.2015.1029271. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael (2014). "Whither goest thou, America?": Deterritorialization, Identity, and the Fellahin Ideal in Jack Kerouac's On the Road. In Kuortti, Joel (Eds.), Transculturation and Aesthetics.Ambivalence,Power and Literature. De Gruyter Brill. ISSN 9789042039155. p. 187–203. doi: 10.1163/9789401211970_012. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael (2014). Don’t Worry about the Government: Agency Panic in Philip K. Dick and Steven Spielberg’s ‘Minority Reports’. In Browne, Ray B. & Urish, Ben (Ed.), The dynamics of interconnections in popular culture(s). Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISSN 9781443850315. p. 142–158. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael (2014). Space and Subjectification in Alan Moore’s The Ballad of Halo Jones, The Saga of the Swampt Thing and V for Vendetta. In Sulmicki, Maciej (Eds.), Negotiating Culture through Comics. Inter-Disciplinary Press. ISSN 9781848882560. p. 125–138. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael (2013). The Individual Subject in Smooth and Striated Space in Alan Moore’s The Ballad of Halo Jones and Saga of the Swamp Thing. In Evans, Jonathan & Giddens, Thomas (Ed.), Cultural Excavation and Formal Expression in the Graphic Novel. Inter-Disciplinary Press. ISSN 9781848881990. p. 185–193. doi: 10.1163/9781848881990_019. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael (2012). HOWL: A Novel Graphic: Authenticity and Irony in Eric Drooker's Adaptations of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl". Scan: Journal of Media Arts Culture. 9(1). Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael J. (2011). Alan Moore's America: The Liberal Individual and American Identities in Watchmen. Journal of Popular Culture. ISSN 0022-3840. 44(4), p. 815–830. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-5931.2011.00864.x. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael J. (2011). The Master Film is a Western : The Mythology of the American West in the Cities of the Red Night Trilogy. European Journal of American Studies. doi: 10.4000/ejas.9412. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This essay traces the vestiges of Western literary and cinematic tropes in Cities of the Red Night, and discusses the development of the Master Film and the dominance of the Western genre in The Place of Dead Roads and some faint echoes of the mythology of the American West in the last book, The Western Lands. The dubious enchantment of cultural myth dominates the Cities of the Red Night trilogy, but particularly the second novel, The Place of Dead Roads, demonstrates that the myth of the American West serves both the powers of hegemony and resistance. In The Place of Dead Roads, the Master Film is unequivocally the Western, centered as it is on the shootist Kim Carsons as the “hero.” His tactic in his liberatory struggle is the warping, splicing and destruction of the narrative myth fabric, developed metaphorically as the “Master Film,” providing as it does a critique of the Western as reigning American cultural myth, as well as questioning the psychic or cognitive hegemony of any cultural myth.

• Prince, Michael J. (2008). Resistance is Futile: Beat Generasjonen, Beat litteratur og samfunnskritikk, Kritikkens forgreninger: Om samfunnskritikk i litteratur og samfunnsvitenskap / Hans Chr. Garmann Johnsen, Terje Dragseth, Oddbjørn Johannessen og Kjetil Lysgård (red.). Cappelen Damm Høyskoleforlaget. p. 111–125. Full text in Research Archive

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• Prince, Michael (2016). Adapting the Beat Poets: Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac On Screen. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 9781442273245. 180 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Forsgren, Frida & Prince, Michael (2015). Out of the Shadows. Beat Women are not Beaten Women. Portal forlag. ISBN 9788283140590. 316 p. Full text in Research Archive

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• Slotnes, Oda Sagebakken; Vatne, Helle Marie & Prince, Michael John (2025). Litteraturens mønstre: Conspiracy and paranoia with Michael Prince. doi: https:/player.captivate.fm/episode/cd474de8-7864-46e6-9739-2145a9d15b25/. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Episode 10: What’s behind the fascination with conspiracy theories in popular culture? Are we living in a world where nothing is as it seems? In this episode, Oda and Helle sit down with Professor Michael Prince to explore how conspiracy and paranoia have shaped literature and film. With examples ranging from the eerie suburbia of The Stepford Wives to the iconic graphic novel Watchmen and the mind-bending world of The Truman Show, we discuss how America’s “conspiracy nation” mindset plays out in storytelling.

• Prince, Michael John (2024). Not Exactly Satire: Performativity and Political Force of Tom MacDonald and Ben Shapiro’s Facts. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael John (2024). AI is a bitch: Harnessing the power of our soulless overlords. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael John (2024). American Elections: Strange Times in a Strange Land. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael John (2023). “Imminent and Striated Spaces in Harry Partch’s The Wayward”. Full text in Research Archive
• Markussen, Bjarne; Slettan, Svein & Prince, Michael John (2022). Arven fra skillingsvisene. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael John (2021). "Axel jensen's Beat Cred.: Ikaros & Line and the Beat Poets. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael John (2021). Desertdscape and renewal in Axel Jensen's Doktor Fantastisk. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael John (2021). Simulations, microdystopias, and the encoded uncanny in Rick and Morty. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael John (2020). «Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding: sosialbanditten etter kjærlighetssommeren». Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael John (2019). Found lyrics og musikalske uttrykk i Harry Partchs The Wayward. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael (2016). The Iconic and the Authentic in Film Adaptations of Works of the Beat Poets. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael & Forsgren, Frida (2015). Out of the Shadows: Beat Women are not Beaten Women. In Forsgren, Frida & Prince, Michael (Ed.), Out of the Shadows. Beat Women are not Beaten Women. Portal forlag. ISSN 9788283140590. p. 9–24. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael John (2015). Literary Reactions to "Peak Oil": From James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency (2005) to World Made By Hand (2008). Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael John (2015). Daniel Stein and Jan-Noël Thon (eds.). From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels:Contributions to the Theory and History of Graphic Narrative. Narratologia 37. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013, vi + 416 pp., 50 figures, € 99.95/$ 140.00 /£ 74.99. Anglia. Zeitschrift für englische Philologie. ISSN 0340-5222. 133(2), p. 411–415. doi: 10.1515/ang-2015-0034. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael (2015). Beat generasjonen-sett i lys av sosiologi og sosialt arbeid. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael (2015). "Hva kjennetegner en Beat forfatter?": Beatgenerasjonen og Axel Jensen. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael (2014). Whose Side Are You On?: Negotiations Between Individual Liberty and Collective Responsibility in Millar and McNiven's Marvel Civil War. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael (2013). The Subterraneans, or Arthur Freed's Beatnik Musical. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael (2013). Why is Marylou Reading Proust?: Intertextuality as Metatextuality in Salles and Rivera's On the Road (2012). Full text in Research Archive
• Shults, Fount LeRon & Prince, Michael (2013). Anarchy Machines: Territory, Faciality and Despotism in "V for Vendetta". Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael (2013). "True to the Spirit"?: The Problem of Authenticity in the Film Adaptation of the Major Works of the Beat Poets. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael & Shults, Fount LeRon (2013). Anarchy Machines: Faciality, Territory and Despotism in V for Vendetta. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael (2013). “Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta: extratextuality and intertextuality in the creative and cultural spheres”. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael (2012). Smooth and Striated Space in Jack Kerouac's On the Road: Sal Paradise encounters the Fallahin. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael (2012). Identities and Territorializations: The Individual Subject in Alan Moore's "The Ballad of Halo Jones" and "Swamp Thing". Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael (2012). The Visual William S. Burroughs. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael (2012). "Reacting to the Past," Critical Thinking and Language Production: The Struggle for Civil Rights, Dorcester, 1963. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael J. (2011). "Eric Drooker's Dumb Show: Visual Allusions and Irony in Drooker's Illustrations of Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl'". Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael J. (2011). "Science Fiction without Irony?: Philip K. Dick's VALIS". Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael J. (2010). "Antony Balch and William S. Burroughs' Towers Open Fire: Continuity, Cut-Up and Themes in Burroughs' Later Fiction. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Balch and Burroughs' early experimental film functions on several textual levels. As an example of cut-ups, it is the first visual and plastic articulation of Burroughs' theories, referencing both the graphic and audio cut-up projects. Certain aspects of the film (dialogue, and some conflicts) closely parallel some of the "routines" from the Nova Trilogy, especially The Ticket that Exploded. Finally, and most surprisingly, Towers Open Fire lends itself well to an ironic / parodic reading of a possible episode of an American science-fiction drama series such as "The Outer Limits."

• Prince, Michael J. (2010). "Authenticity, Irony, and Satire in Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael J. (2010). "In the Land of The 39 Steps": Cybernetics and Centralized Planning in the 1930s U.K. and U.S. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  It is a commonplace that creative artists detect significant cultural shifts before the society at large. Alfred Hitchcock's espionage comedy, "The 39 Steps," and John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" indicate a steady erosion of personal agency in the face of systemic integration (at the site of production) and centralized planning (at the site of exchange). These late-1930s texts are read as presaging the implimentation of "cybernetics" (so named by MIT mathematician Norbert Weiner), and greater collectivization in the North Atlantic society as discussed by F. A. Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom." This has led to a growing unease in the relationship between the individual and society, a significant literary subtext during the Cold War years.

• Prince, Michael J. (2009). "Orwell i e-bokens alder". p. 5–5. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Når Amazon fjernet Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four fra Kindle e-boklesere, ble det tydelig at de som tilbyr informasjon og litteratur på Internett kan også fjerne det.

• Prince, Michael J. (2008). George Orwell's Satirical Legacy: Totalitarianism, Cybernetics, and Joseph Heller's Catch-22. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Through a series of allusions and references to Nineteen Eighty-Four, Joseph Heller makes it clear that Catch-22 "writes back" to Orwell's great dystopian satire. However, the oppressive power structures evident in Orwell, based upon WW2, are presented in a modern post-WW2 guise. Totalitarian control of the individual has given way to Cybernetic integration. Heller's progressive "materialization" of death is his gesture to critique the weakened position of the individual in this paradigm of systems thinking.

• Prince, Michael J. (2008). William S. Burroughs's Western Lands: The Mythology of the American West in the Cities of the Red Night Trilogy. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  William S. Burroughs employs a deliberate sampling technique that references popular culture texts, particularly "pulp" literature and the cinema. In the three books of the Cities of the Red Night trilogy, especially in the middle volume "Place of the Dead Roads," the dominant cultural references come from the Western. By re-inscribing the tropes of the West with empowerment for characteristically marginalized figures, Burroughs is challenging, not just the Western, but all metanarratives that claim to define a culture.

• Prince, Michael J. (2008). Alan Moore's America: The Liberal Individual in Watchmen. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In spite of declared desire to expound on the collective "utopian possibilities" represented in the propensities of Moore's super hero entourage in the graphic novel "Watchmen," both structurally and in the portrayal of the characters, a stronger sympathy for the liberal individual is evident. The character Rorschach in particular is singled out for in depth discussion as a guiding force for the narrative as well as a representative for "liberal" ideology.

• Prince, Michael J. (2007). Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" at Fifty: Still Cause for Celebration? Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael J. (2006). By our Tunes Shall Ye Know us: Music and Identity in Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo and Frank Zappa's Joe's Garage. Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael J. (2006). Superpower / Superhero Transference in Alan Moore & David Gibbons' Graphic Novel "Watchmen". Full text in Research Archive
• Prince, Michael J. (2005). Two "minority reports": a comparison of Philip K. Dick's and Steven Spielberg's science fiction futures. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Philip K. Dick composed his 1950s pulp sf magazine article under the shadow of the McCarthy hearings; Stephen Speilberg released his version of this story in the post-9-11 environment. While Dick's story seems to endorse America as a totalitarian police state, and Speilberg's to condemn such an idea, the film version portrays the societal use of technologies of intrusive surveillance and censure as more naturalized and inevitable.

• Prince, Michael J. (2005). The Science Fiction Protocols of Frank Zappa: Problems of Genre and Satire in 'Billy the Mountain', Joe's Garage, and Thing-Fish. ?. Full text in Research Archive

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