New Books in Film
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network, an academic audio library dedicated to public education. Each episode features scholars discussing their recently published research with another expert in their field. The podcast covers a wide range of topics related to film studies. Listeners can explore over 150 channels and thousands of episodes on the New Books Network website.
Episodes
Mulholland Drive at 25: Film Quarterly
In this episode, J. M. Tyree, the editor of Film Quarterly discusses a dossier of articles about David’s Lynch’s 2001 Mulholland Drive on its 25th anniversary with dossier editor Eileen G’Sell.
Film Quarterly (FQ) is published four times a year by the University of California Press. For more information about the journal, including subscription and submission information,
Vincent Haddad, "Next Time on Dragon Ball: Playing with a Manga and Anime Franchise" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)
Since its debut in 1984, Dragon Ball has become one of the most popular, influential, and lucrative media franchises in the world. In Next Time on Dragon Ball: Playing with a Manga and Anime Franchise (U Minnesota Press, 2026), Dr. Vincent Haddad investigates how the franchise has maintained huge global demand despite its formulaic plotlines. Examining its exhaustive repetition of s
Tár
Tod Field’s Tár (2022) is one of the best ghost stories we’ve discussed on the show. The story of a troiubled genius, the film is also a wonderfully ambiguous portrat of a person persued by her past in the form of an unseen and vengerful force. Lydia Tár is by turns charismatic, repulsive, fascinating, and frightening. She’s a real person and demands a compicated response, just like the
Linda Williams and eds. Christine Gledhill et al., "Melodrama As Provocateur" (Duke UP, 2026)
The centerpiece of Melodrama as Provocateur (Duke UP, 2026) is an essay by Linda Williams (1946–2025). Williams was Professor of Film Studies and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. Her highly influential work reframed some of cinema’s most neglected or denigrated genres from a feminist perspective, including documentary, pornography, horror, and melodrama.
Melodrama is
Ellery E. Foutch, "A Perfectionist Impulse: The Art of Stopping Time in the Nineteenth Century (U Minnesota Press, 2026)
Cultural studies of the nineteenth century often categorize their subjects as being motivated by one of two opposing notions: a wholehearted embrace of progress or an antimodernist nostalgia. A Perfectionist Impulse: The Art of Stopping Time in the Nineteenth Century (U Minnesota Press, 2026) centers a different kind of response to the period’s newly intensified awareness of tempora
Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The War of the Worlds
In light of the dismal Disclosure Day (2026), we return to two films that show Spielberg tackling alien visitation (or invasion) stories while at the height of his powers. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and The War of the Worlds (2005) are decades apart, yet united by a single image and devotion to their audiences. The first is as Disneylike as Pinocch
Kathleen W. Taylor Kollman, "The Fictional Female Presidency in Film, Television, and Literature: Representations from 1932 to 2024" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026)
Kathleen W. Taylor Kollman has a new book out that focuses on the reality of women running for president in the United States, and the fictional representations of this idea that we have seen over the past hundred years. The Fictional Female Presidency in Film, Television, and Literature: Representations from 1932 to 2024 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026) takes up a number of different an
David Zeitlyn and Chihab El Khachab eds., "Understanding Social Images: Essays on Visual Methods and Teaching Visual Anthropology" (Berghahn, 2025)
In this episode I discuss the book Understanding Social Images: Essays on Visual Methods and Teaching Anthropology (Berghahn, 2025) with co-editors David Zeitlyn and Chihab El Khachab, a posthumous collection of writings by the late anthropologist Marcus Banks. Banks was a key the figures in development of visual anthropology, but his work remains of continuing relevance. This volume br
Anja Foerschner, "Female Art and Agency in Yugoslavia, 1971–2001" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
In Female Art and Agency in Yugoslavia, 1971–2001 (Bloomsbury, 2024), Anja Foerschner offers a compelling exploration of the women artists, curators, scholars, and activists who shaped the cultural landscape of Yugoslavia and its successor states. Drawing on both original research and existing scholarship, she traces the emergence of the New Art Practice of the late 1960s and 1970s, hig
Mike F. Alvarez, Warren J. Bareiss, and Jolane Flanigan eds., "Suicide in Popular Media and Culture: Studies in Framing a Social Catastrophe" (Bristol University Press, 2026)
NB: This episode contains a discussion of suicide and
may not be appropriate for all listeners. If you are thinking about
hurting yourself, help is always available at 988 in the United States.
Suicide in Popular Media and Culture: Studies in Framing a Social Catastrophe
(Bristol University Press, 2026) brings together scholars from across
disciplines to examine how suicid
Adam Geczy, "Glasses" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Glasses are among the oldest and most commonplace prosthetics we have
invented. But what does it mean to wear glasses? There is more to the
answer than correcting vision. Glasses alter, enhance, and shield the
way that we view the world, and the way the world sees us.
Everyone has encounters with glasses, passively or actively, from
reading glasses to sunglasses. At times they are the main id
Soraya Murray, "Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination" (MIT Press, 2026)
Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination
(MIT Press, 2026) is the first dedicated examination of popular movies
classified as “thrillers” that channel societal anxiety or dread about
advanced technologies like supercomputers, robotics, AI, biotech,
military weaponry, and surveillance culture. Technothriller is
about the changing imagination of technology within an American context
a
Krzysztof Rowiński, "Failure Narratives Beyond Redemption: Twentieth Century Literature and Film" (Routledge, 2026)
Today’s guest, Krzysztof Rowiński, is the author of Failure Narratives Beyond Redemption: Twentieth Century Literature and Film
(Routledge, 2026). This book focuses on the concept of non- redemptive
failure, a type of failure that is not part of a larger narrative of
success or narrative redemption, with attention to how the concept
functions between literature, critical theory, and other fiel
Jonathan L. Friedmann, "Chai Noon: Jews and the Cinematic Wild West" (U Wisconsin Press, 2025)
Only a few Westerns contain explicitly Jewish stories or themes, and very rarely do Old West tales involve identifiably Jewish
characters. Yet Jewish contributors have shaped the Western—once
Hollywood's most popular genre—ever since the silent era, both onscreen
and offscreen, and some filmmakers have sought to infuse the genre with a
distinctly Jewish sensibility. In Chai Noon: Jews and the
Grizzly Man
Tennyson called nature “red in tooth and claw,” but that warning didn’t keep Timothy Treadwell from living among the grizzlies of Alaska for thirteen summers–until one of them killed him and his girlfriend. Werner Herzog’s 2005 documentary Grizzly Man tells Treadwell’s story and raises the issues of what happens when we ascribe human motives and characteristics to animals and the ways in which we
Blue Jasmine
Woody Allen has called A Streetcar Named Desire the most well-directed film ever made and its influence on Blue Jasmine (2013) is unmistakable. Both concern a woman whose fantasy life and self-deception break down and both feature incredible performances by the lead actress: in Streetcar, it’s Vivien Leigh and here it’s Cate Blanchett. And if Streetcar is a high point of Eliza Kazan’s filmography,
Shikha Jhingan, "The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology" (Wayne State UP, 2025)
How the sound of the female playback voice impacts Bollywood's cultural, musical, and cinematic environment.
Drawing on sound studies and performance theory, scholar Shikha Jhingan explores the discursive nature of the female playback voice in Bombay film songs in The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology (Wayne State UP, 2025). Mapping the production, circulation, and recept
Allyson Nadia Field, "Acts of Love: Black Performance and the Kiss That Changed Film History" (U California Press, 2026)
In 1898, vaudeville actors Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown joyously embraced in a short silent film titled Something Good—Negro Kiss.
The first known film to portray African American affection, it was lost
for over a century until its rediscovery inspired contemporary
audiences with a powerful and enduring depiction of Black love. More
than a missing piece in an untold history of Black cinematic
Mackenzi Lee, "Masters of the Universe: Teela: Daughter of Eternos" (Mattel, 2026)
Mackenzi Lee's Masters of the Universe: Teela: Daughter of Eternos (Mattel, 2026) is a young adult tie-in for the Masters of the Universe (2026) film.
A FALLEN KINGDOMFour years after Skeletor decimated the kingdom of Eternos, Teela and the scattered refugees of Eternia survive by never staying in one place for long. When a brutal storm of acidic rain deep within the Evergreen Forest leaves thei
Robin R. Means Coleman and Novotny Lawrence eds., "The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Film" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Since the release of Jordan Peele's Academy Award-winning horror hit Get Out (2017), interest in Black horror films has erupted. This renewed intrigue in stories about Black life, history, culture, or "Blackness" has taken two forms. First, the history and politics of race have been centered in the horror genre. Second, Black horror has become an increasingly visible topic in mainstream discourses
Oscar Winberg, "Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics" (UNC Press, 2025)
Political historian Oscar Winberg has a fascinating new book titled Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics. This book weaves together quite a few different threads in examining the historical context in which the television show, All In The Family, landed on American television screens. Archie Bunker for President examines why this particular sitcom was a kin
Tony Lee Moral, "A Century of Hitchcock: The Man, the Myths, the Legacy" (UP of Kentucky, 2026)
For over a century, Alfred Hitchcock has remained one of cinema's
most influential directors. Known as the Master of Suspense, this
visionary filmmaker directed more than fifty films over six decades. His thriller The Lodger (1927) marked the start of his signature style, which was later exemplified in classic films like Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (19
Thomas Doherty, "How Film Became History: The Rise of the Archival Documentary in 1930s America" (Columbia UP, 2026)
By the 1930s, filmmakers had access to a backlog of footage from nearly forty years of motion pictures, allowing them to create a new kind of film stitched together from the raw material of older films. At around the same time, the transition to synchronous sound added a transformative new element to the grammar of cinema: the voiceover narration. Together, the film inventory and offscreen comment
Angharad N. Valdivia and Isabel Molina-Guzmán, "Rebooting Inequality: Critical Takes on Film and Television Remakes" (NYU Press, 2026)
From Ghostbusters to Will & Grace, One Day at a Time to Jurassic Park, the past decade has seen Hollywood reach a new peak in its obsession with reboots, remakes, and revivals. Spearheaded by media giants like Disney and Netflix, these projects promise progress—more diverse casts, “timely” social commentary, and redemptive nostalgia—yet they often reproduce the very inequalities they claim to addr
Sumana Roy, "Plant Thinkers of Twentieth-Century Bengal" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Plant Thinkers of Twentieth-Century Bengal (Oxford UP, 2024) by Sumana Roy takes an unexpected cast of writers and artists and, in studying their work as ‘plant thinkers’, looks at how their stories and songs, art and films, and, of course, the idiomatic affected Bengali life and thought. Forest and garden, grass and root, weeds and magical plants—supported by a foliage of thought that allowed the
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
In 1828, a seventeen-year-old boy was found wandering the streets of Nuremberg, holding two letters and unable to say more than a few words. The locals adopted him as a kind of municipal mascot; eventually, they learned that he had been bound in darkness until his release and struggled to learn more about his past. Werner Herzog took the story as a basis for his 1974 film–not one of his trademark
Benjamin Dalton, "Catherine Malabou and Contemporary French Literature and Film: Witnessing Plasticity" (Edinburgh UP, 2026)
Our bodies and brains are radically transformable, mutable and plastic. From the neuroplasticity of the brain to the epigenetic malleability of our bodies and of all organic life, the work of the contemporary French philosopher Catherine Malabou invites us to consider our plasticity as both a creative resource and an ethical challenge.
Catherine Malabou and Contemporary French Literature and Film
Ayşehan Jülide Etem, "Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations" (Columbia UP, 2026)
Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations (Columbia UP, 2026) offers a powerful new account of how film shaped international relations and national identity. Drawing on previously unexamined and recently declassified archives in Turkey and the United States, Ayşehan Jülide Etem demonstrates how both countries used educational films to align institutional agendas and geopolitical inter
Wake Up Dead Man (Fr Scott Bailey): The Priest who Helped Hollywood Make a Murder Mystery Movie about the Church
When Hollywood director Rian Johnson started making Wake Up Dead Man, the new Knives Out mystery (a movie you can watch on Netflix), he needed some help. His uncle and aunt in Denver connected him with their pastor in Denver, Father Scott Bailey, who became an advisor to the project. He talks about the process and the big questions of this movie with me. (And I admit: I hated the beginning and sto
Es-pranza Humphrey, "Act Black: Posters from Black American Stage & Screen" (Poster House Museum, 2026)
Starting in the 1880s, Black performers, and those invested in telling stories centering Black people, attempted to counter the dehumanizing and harmful stereotypes used to portray Black characters. Shows began touting “All Colored Revues” to indicate that a cast was made up of actual Black performers rather than white people in blackface, and that these spectacles aimed to build stories around th
Patrick Noonan, "Age of Disaffection: The Aesthetic Critique of Politics in 1960s Japan" (Columbia UP, 2025)
The 1960s in Japan have long been understood as a period of radical political engagement. But as political movements from Old Left Communism to New Left revolts appeared to fail in their efforts to revolutionize Japanese society, artists and intellectuals came to reject the ideals of postwar politics. Instead, they advocated withdrawing from political participation and making self-transformation t
Ana I. Oancea, "Dangerous Creations: The Inventor Novel in Fin-de-siècle France" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
Dangerous Creations: The Inventor Novel in Fin-de-siècle France (U Toronto Press, 2025) presents a master narrative of the inventor in fin-de-siècle French literature by analyzing the works of Jules Verne, Albert Robida, Émile Zola, and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam. Their writings challenge the role of science in shaping French national identity and aim to transform contemporary understandings of scien
Frontier Films for America250: On the Western Genre and Beyond with Matthew J. Franck
Here in Episode 7 of Season 5, I interview Dr. Matthew J. Franck. A senior contributing fellow at Public Discourse, a visiting lecturer in the Department of Politics at Princeton University, as well as a senior fellow at the Witherspoon Institute and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Radford University, he has written, edited, and contributed to many books, including Against the Imperial
Jeremy Harding's Analogue Africa: Notes on the Anti-Colonial Imagination
Jeremy Harding has long been one of the premier essayists and journalists of our day. Elegant, committed and free of cant, Harding's writing has often appeared in the London Review of Books, from which a number of these essays were drawn. Harding explores the intersection of politics and culture on the African continent, and unearths stories that explain the dialectical relations between the two s
Richard Ivan Jobs and Steven Van Wolputte, "In the Land of the Lacandón: A Graphic History of Adventure and Imperialism" (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2025)
In the mid-1930s the amateur French ethnographer and filmmaker Bernard de Colmont ventured into the mountainous state of Chiapas to study the Lacandón people and broadcast their way of life to a curious European public. Considered a “lost tribe,” the Lacandón were thought to be the closest living relatives of the ancient Maya.De Colmont became a celebrity explorer whose adventures generated consid
Through the Lens of Taiwan: Film, History, and Identity
This podcast episode is hosted by Mart Tšernjuk, the Taiwan Coordinator at the University of Tartu Asia who is talking to Prof. Robert Chen, a leading scholar of Taiwanese cinema, discussing the relationship between film, history, and identity in Taiwan.
Drawing on Chen’s teaching experience at the University of Tartu, he highlights how Estonian students engage deeply with Taiwanese films, partic
Chinatown
“Forget it, Jake—it’s Chinatown.” This piece of advice is as famous as it is useless: Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) will never be able to forget what he’s seen. Chinatown (1974) is also impossible to forget: whether it’s the perfect nod to noir or the best noir of all time, it’s endlessly fascinating, compelling, and disturbing. Join us for an improvised conversation about why the film still fascin
Jes Battis, "It's Only Forever: Labyrinth" (ECW Press, 2026)
Jes Battis' new book, It's Only Forever. Labyrinth (ECW Press, 2026) is a wild, intimate, and political deep dive into Jim Henson’s 1986 classic starring David Bowie and its cast of lovable, gender-defying goblins. In the 40 years since Labyrinth’s release, Jim Henson’s cult classic starring a menagerie of goblin puppets, the conversation about it has only grown louder. Fans are still holding view
Michael Lee Nirenberg, "Cinematic Immunity" (Feral House, 2026)
The unbelievable insider stories of how they “got the shot,” Cinematic Immunity tells the story of New York City's movie industry from the crew members who created the sets, lit the scenes, and shot the film. Focused on the golden age (1950-1990) of New York filmmaking, Cinematic Immunity covers On the Waterfront through The Sopranos.
The East Coast film industry, thousands of miles from the Los
Laura Horak, "Trans Cinema: Making Communities, Identities, and Worlds" (U California Press, 2026)
Since the 1990s, a largely underground upwelling of trans creativity has helped new trans identities, communities, and political movements come together. In Trans Cinema: Making Communities, Identities, and Worlds (University of California Press, 2026), Dr. Laura Horak provides an entryway to the wildly diverse and creative cinema made by trans creators, including those who are Black, Indigenous,
Daisuke Miyao, "Ozu and the Ethics of Indeterminacy" (Duke UP, 2026)
Ozu and the Ethics of Indeterminacy (Duke University Press, 2026) re-examines cinema studies through the work of Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu, employing the multiple methodologies and indeterminacy of Ozu’s films as a model for discussions of cinema’s relationship to the world and the formation of film studies as a discipline.
Author Daisuke Miyao is Professor and Hajime Mori Chair in Japanese
Qi Ai, "Feng Xiaogang's New Year Films: Industry, Regulation, Humour and Authorship" (Routledge, 2025)
Feng Xiaogang's New Year Films: Industry, Regulation, Humour and Authorship (Routledge, 2025) offers not only an in-depth study of Feng Xiaogang as a cinematic auteur but also a comprehensive and informative discussion of the industrial transformation of mainstream Chinese cinema under party-state regulation from the 1990s to the 2010s.
Ai Qi is a lecturer at the School of Journalism and Communic
Aurore Spiers, "Archiving the Past: Women's Film History in France, 1927–1978" (U California Press, 2026)
What happens when we assume women’s presence in film history instead of their absence? This is the question at the heart of Archiving the Past: Women’s Film History in France, 1927–1978, the newest addition to the Feminist Media Histories book series at the University of California Press.
The first book by Aurore Spiers, Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at Texas A&M University, Archi
Miranda Banks and Kate Fortmueller, "Boom to Bust: How Streaming Broke Hollywood Workers" (U California Press, 2026)
Boom to Bust is a timely investigation into the rise of Peak TV and the perfect storm that caused a rapid decline in Hollywood work.
When Hollywood writers and actors went on strike in 2023, they drew attention to the rapidly changing nature of film and television production. In Boom to Bust, media industry experts Miranda Banks and Kate Fortmueller combine economic and cultural analysis and inte
The Shawshank Redemption in China: An Interview with Matti Lehtonen
How can an entirely foreign cast perform the American “The Shawshank Redemption” in the Chinese language across China? In this episode of the Nordic Asia podcast, Julie Yu-Wen Chen talks with Matti E. Lehtonen, a Finnish national who shares his journey from a decades-long career in engineering and business to a starring role in the first Chinese-language stage production of The Shawshank Redemptio
Get Shorty
Hollywood loves making movies about itself: on this show alone, we’ve done Sunset Boulevard, Sullivan’s Travels, and Singin’ in the Rain. Get Shorty (1995) is Elmore Leonard’s contribution to the genre, a film that was “meta” before the term became overused: we are given the illusion of spontaneity and the story–like one of Leonard’s novels–seems like it’s being made up as it moves along. This per
Gabriel S. Estrada, "Queer Indigenous Cinemas: Sovereign Genders from Seven Directions" (U Arizona Press, 2026)
In Queer Indigenous Cinemas, scholar Gabriel S. Estrada offers an analysis of queer Indigenous media from the Americas, the Pacific, and the Caribbean. This groundbreaking work uses Indigenous directional space and sovereign mapping methods to uncover the emotional, spiritual, and cultural dimensions of queer Indigenous lives. The book's seven chapters--each one of the directions--look closely at
Leslie Barnes, "Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
In Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film (Edinburgh UP, 2025), Leslie Barnes examines the ambivalences that mark Southeast Asian sex industries under global imperialism. She explores the multi-layered subjectivities of sex workers, procurers and clients, and interrogates the frameworks in which discourses surrounding sex work circulate. Engaged with debates conce
Christine Grandy, "Race on Screen: Audience Racism in Twentieth-Century Britain" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
What is the role of television in the history of the UK? In Race on Screen: Audience Racism in Twentieth-Century Britain (Cambridge UP, 2026) Christine Grandy, an Associate Professor in History at the University of Lincoln, explores how producers, audiences, and television programmes themselves addressed race and racism in the Twentieth-Century. Drawing on a huge range of archival material, the bo
Michael Mann Reconsidered: Heat and Collateral
It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and in this show we conclude our series on the films of Michael Mann. Structured as a knock-out tournament, we have set his eight most highly regarded movies in single-elimination competition. Today, we consider Heat (1995) and Collateral (2004). We ask what makes a Michael Mann movie distinctive, and what themes and ideas seem to capture his attention and bring ou
Michael Allan, "Cinema before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers" (Fordham UP, 2026)
Cinema Before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers (Fordham UP, 2026) investigates the transnational origins of filmmaking by focusing on a case study in world cinema—the 1896-1897 voyage of one of the Lumière Brothers camera operators, Alexandre Promio, across North Africa and the Middle East. The book shows how the sites in these early films are not simply backdrops, but integral
Michael Mann Reconsidered: Ali and The Last of the Mohicans
It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and in this show we start a series on the films of Michael Mann. Structured as a knock-out tournament, we set his eight most highly regarded movies single-elimination competition. Today, we consider Ali (2001) and The Last of the Mohicans (1992). We ask what makes a Michael Mann movie distinctive, and what themes and ideas seem to capture his attention and bring ou
Michael Mann Reconsidered: Ferrari and Manhunter
It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and in this show we start a series on the films of Michael Mann. Structured as a knock-out tournament, we set his eight most highly regarded movies single-elimination competition. Today, we consider Ferrari (2023) and Manhunter (1986). We ask what makes a Michael Mann movie distinctive, and what themes and ideas seem to capture his attention and bring out his best
Becca Voelcker, "Land Cinema in an Age of Extraction" (U California Press, 2025)
Land Cinema in an Age of Extraction considers nonfiction filmmakers and film collectives whose work advances an understanding of land as a locus of social and environmental responsibility. Diving into little-known archives to explore films that resonate across geographies, Becca Voelcker unearths key examples of eco-political counterculture, from farmer-filmmakers in Japan and Mali to a gardener-f
Karen McNally ed., "Women in Hollywood's Dream Factory: Tales of Inequality, Abuse, and Resistance" (U Illinois Press, 2026)
The #MeToo revelations put a twenty-first-century stamp on the age-old story of women’s mistreatment in Hollywood. In Women in Hollywood's Dream Factory: Tales of Inequality, Abuse, and Resistance (U Illinois Press, 2026) Karen McNally edits a collection focused on examining and revising film history in the aftermath of the women’s stories, past and present, that have come to light.The collectio
Michael Mann Reconsidered: Thief and The Insider
It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and in this show we start a series on the films of Michael Mann. Structured as a knock-out tournament, we set his eight most highly regarded movies single-elimination competition, starting with Thief (1981) Vs. The Insider (1999). We ask what makes a Michael Mann movie distinctive, and what themes and ideas seem to capture his attention and bring out his best work.
A Star Is Born (1937)
A Star Is Born has been filmed four times, but the first version is the best: a combination of Singin’ in the Rain and Death of a Salesman, David O. Selznick’s production drips with “movie” and artificiality, yet still delivers an ending that seems taken from Greek tragedy. No stars were harmed in the making of this film–yet the film also dramatizes the harm inflicted by a steady diet of fame. It
Stephen Lee Naish, "Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency" (Lever Press, 2026)
Movies open a window into our collective soul. In Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency (Lever Press, 2026), Stephen Lee Naish guides us through recent cinematic phenomena that reflect/refract our contemporary political existence. Stephen Lee Naish is a writer, independent researcher, and cultural critic. He is the author of several books on film, politics, music, and pop culture. He lives
Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry | Filmmaker Q&A
February 24—Following a screening of the documentary Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry during the weekend of Feb. 20–22, 2026, filmmaker Laura Dunn and Mary Berry, executive director of The Berry Center, joined Library of America for an online Q&A focused on the film and its subject: author, poet, farmer, and activist Wendell Berry and his home in Henry County, KY. Hosted by Ben Lasman, onli
Rachel Walther, "Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon" (Headpress, 2026)
In her new book, Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon (Headpress, 2026) film historian Rachel Walther draws on extensive archival research delving into the film’s backstory, tracing how an unbelievable true crime tale of love, bank robbery, and LGBTQI+ activism became a box-office smash and catapulted a group of Brooklyn outsiders into the media spotlight. Name-checked on TV shows
Boiling Point
Every other movie seems to be touted as a “tour de force”--but Philip Barantini’s 2021 look at ninety minutes in the life of a chef and everyone around him really earns that praise. The entire film was shot in one take, not to be “original,” but because doing so reflects the tension and stress of the whole enterprise: a restaurant, like a film, is a complicated ecosystem in which personalities, ha
Michael Glover Smith, "Bob Dylan as Filmmaker: No Time to Think" (McNidder and Grace, 2026)
A deep dive into one of the most overlooked -- and fascinating -- sides of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature winner: Bob Dylan, the filmmaker. While his music and lyrics have been studied endlessly, his work behind (and in front of) the camera remains largely unexplored. No other book has taken this angle, and with Dylan's legend still growing, the audience is more than ready for a bold new take.
Veronique Boone, "Le Corbusier on Camera: The Unknown Films of Ernest Weissmann" (Birkhaüser, 2024)
Le Corbusier on Camera: The Unknown Films of Ernest Weissmann (Birkhaüser, 2024) is based on amateur films, shot by the architect Ernest Weissmann (1903-1985) with a Pathé Motocamera in the years 1929-1933 at, among other places, the Atelier Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. These films capture moments from Le Corbusier's life that have never been seen before. It also documents his friendships wi
Santiago Fouz-Hernández, "The Films of Bigas Luna" (Manchester UP, 2025)
Written by Professor Santiago Fouz-Hernández (Durham University), The Films of Bigas Luna (Manchester UP, 2025) is the first comprehensive English-language study of the complete filmography of Spanish filmmaker Bigas Luna, spanning from Tatuaje (1976) to DiDi Hollywood (2010).Engaging with theoretical frameworks such as haptic cinema, erotic cinema, auteur theory, and studies of gender, sexuality
The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy
In an age of growing wealth disparities, politicians on both sides of the aisle are sounding the alarm about the fading American Dream. Yet despite all evidence to the contrary, many still view the United States as the land of opportunity. The American Mirage addresses this puzzle by exposing the stark reality of today’s media landscape, revealing how popular entertainment media shapes politics an
Darién J. Davis, "'Black Orpheus' and the Globalization of Afro-Brazilian Culture" (Rutgers UP, 2026)
“Black Orpheus” and the Globalization of Afro-Brazilian Culture (Rutgers UP, 2026) is the first historical study in English to examine the development, production, and reception of the 1958 film Black Orpheus and its legacy in the 1960s and 1970s. It focuses on the making of the film and the trajectories of the major actors and musicians who helped construct an image of Black Brazil and provides a
Robert P. Kolker and David Wyatt, "The Film Auteur: Angles of Vision" (Routledge, 2026)
An accessible introduction to the concept of the auteur (author) in film theory.
In The Film Auteur: Angles of Vision (Routledge, 2026) Robert Kolker and David Wyatt provide readers with a history of auteur theory, from its initial origins in France in the late 1940s as an outgrowth of the cinematic theories of the French film critics and theorists André Bazin and Alexandre Astruc, to the canoni
His Girl Friday
The average estimated words-per-minute in a feature film is 90; His Girl Friday (1940) clocks in at 240. And yet the fast dialogue is only one of its many fascinations. Everything about it perfectly lands: the script, the casting, the camerawork, the minor players–all contribute to what can be called, without the kind of hyperbole found in the Morning Post, a perfect film. It’s as cynical as Netw
Dan Hassler-Forest, "Fast and Furious Franchising: How the Serialized Blockbuster Remade Hollywood" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)
Fast and Furious Franchising charts the transformation of Hollywood through the story of one of its most successful cinematic universes. Released in 2001, The Fast and the Furious became an unexpected hit, developing into a seven-billion-dollar media franchise with nine direct sequels (so far), one “sidequel,” copious spin-offs, and licensing deals from board games to theme park rides.
In Fast an
Sourit Bhattacharya, "Postcolonialism Now: Literature, Reading, Decolonising" (Orient BlackSwan, 2024)
Postcolonialism Now: Literature, Reading, Decolonising (Orient BlackSwan, 2024) by Sourit Bhattacharya introduces a new method of decolonial reading and criticism. It critically examines the history and ongoing influence of colonialism and imperialism in postcolonial cultures and texts. The volume seeks to address the crucial question of how to read postcolonial literatures closely and comparative
Isaac Butler, "The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
“When I set out to write this book, I decided to approach it like a biography. After all, the Method had parents, obscure beginnings, fumbling toward its purpose, a spectacular rise, struggles as it reached the top, and an eventual decline.” This is how Isaac Butler articulates his project in The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act (Bloomsbury, February 2022). The Method tracks the or
Jacqueline Riding, "Hard Streets: Working-Class Lives in Charlie Chaplin’s London" (Profile Books, 2025)
Welcome to the hard streets: working-class London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in Hard Streets: Working-Class Lives in Charlie Chaplin’s London (Profile, 2026) by Dr. Jacqueline Riding.
Charlie Chaplin rose from the hard streets of Edwardian London to worldwide fame. But his work and outlook were always shaped by the world he came from, a place of cheap entertainments and
Robert Guffey, "Hollywood Haunts the World: An Investigation into the Cinema of Occulted Taboos" (Headpress, 2026)
In Hollywood Haunts the World: An Investigation into the Cinema of Occulted Taboos (Headpress, 2026), Robert Guffey deconstructs the most powerful taboos of the twentieth century (and the initial decades of the twenty-first century) by analyzing how disturbing and transgressive ideas involving Theosophy, Gnosticism, Freemasonry, Darwinian Evolution, Surrealism, Freudian and Jungian psychology, rac
Twentieth Century
Twentieth Century (1934) is a screwball comedy that moves like a runaway train and we are delightfully tied to the tracks. John Barrymore’s audacious performance as director Oscar Jaffee is awe-inspiring; Carole Lombard is equal to the task of pushing back against the man who, in a sense, created her. It’s Frankenstein meets His Girl Friday; it’s ninety minutes of screaming and yelling; it’s fille
Mark Gallagher, "Cosmosexuals: Screen Acting, Stardom, and Male Sex Appeal" (U Texas Press, 2025)
In Cosmosexuals: Screen Acting, Stardom, and Male Sex Appeal (U Texas Press, 2025), Dr. Mark Gallagher presents an examination of male screen sex appeal and the ways that race, ethnicity, and national origin combine with performance tools and film and television style to aid or inhibit actors’ circulation on an increasingly global stage.
Sex appeal is complicated, especially for screen actors. Lo
Justin L. Mann, "Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation" (Duke UP, 2026)
Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation (Duke UP, 2026) takes Black speculative fiction as a central archive for understanding global security culture from the Reagan administration to the present. Drawing on black feminist, critical race, and queer of color theoretical traditions, Justin L. Mann posits that world-breaking is an ethical and aesthetic orientation to the
163* The Drama of Celebrity with Sharon Marcus (JP)
As Oscar Season rolls around, Recall This Book looks back to John's 2019 discussion with Columbia University professor Sharon Marcus about The Drama of Celebrity, her tour-de-force account of how stars are born, publicized, and in time devoutly scrapbooked by adoring fans.
They tackle a question at least as old as Sarah Bernhardt: who or what makes a star? Rather than crediting star making to the
Justin Owen Rawlins, "Imagining the Method: Reception, Identity, and American Screen Performance" (U Texas Press, 2024)
Only one performance style has dominated the lexicon of the casual moviegoer: “Method acting.” The first reception-based analysis of film acting, Imagining the Method: Reception, Identity, and American Screen Performance (U Texas Press, 2024) investigates how popular understandings of the so-called Method—what its author Justin Rawlins calls "methodness"—created an exclusive brand for white, male
Robert P. Kolker and Nathan Abrams, "Kubrick: An Odyssey" (Pegasus Books, 2024)
The definitive biography of the creator of 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, and A Clockwork Orange, presenting the most in-depth portrait yet of the groundbreaking filmmaker.
The enigmatic and elusive filmmaker Stanley Kubrick has not been treated to a full-length biography in over twenty years.
Kubrick: An Odyssey (Pegasus Books, 2024) fills that gap. This definitive book is based on access to
Min Joo Lee, "Finding Mr. Perfect: K-Drama, Pop Culture, Romance, and Race" (Rutgers UP, 2025)
Finding Mr. Perfect: K-Drama, Pop Culture, Romance, and Race (Rutgers UP, 2025) by Dr. Min Joo Lee explores the romantic relationships between Korean men and women who were inspired by romantic Korean televisual depictions of Korean masculinity to travel to Korea as tourists. Dr. Lee argues that disparate racialized erotic desires of Korean pop culture fans, foreign tourists to Korea, Korean men,
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