Kermit Culture

Kermit Culture is a 323 page academic anthology examining Jim Henson's Muppets, and primarily The Muppet Show family of characters, from different perspectives and critical approaches. The book follows various other anthologies focusing on pop culture, such as Reading the Rabbit and multiple Buffy texts. However, Kermit Culture marks the first sizable representation of "Muppet Studies" outside of fandom.

The individual essays, contributed by more than a dozen different authors, are grouped into three larger sections. "Audience Participation" contains essays which look at the role of the audience (and critics such as Statler and Waldorf) within the Muppet world, as well as how audiences react to or are reflected in the puppet characters. "Adaptation and Performance" looks at aspects of puppetry, the Muppets as actors (particularly in The Muppet Christmas Carol and The Muppets' Wizard of Oz), William Shakespeare, and Gonzo as performance artiste. The final section, "Theories and Strategies," focuses on ways of interpreting and critiquing the Muppets, venturing into such realms as gender studies (via Miss Piggy), morality (via Kermit the Frog), national identity (and in particular the British influence and financial backing, and economics, to name a few.

The book is tentatively slated for a late spring or fall release.