B. Ruby Rich designated a brand new genre, the New Queer Cinema (NQC), in her groundbreaking article in the Village Voice in 1992. This movement in film and video was intensely political and aesthetically innovative, made possible by the debut of the camcorder, and driven initially by outrage over the unchecked spread of AIDS. The genre has grown to include an entire generation of queer artists, filmmakers, and activists.As a critic, curator, journalist, and scholar, Rich ...

If there was a moment during the sixties, seventies, or eighties that changed the history of the women’s film movement, B. Ruby Rich was there. Part journalistic chronicle, part memoir, and 100% pure cultural historical odyssey, Chick Flicks—with its definitive, the-way-it-was collection of essays—captures the birth and growth of feminist film as no other book has done.For over three decades Rich has been one of the most important voices in feminist film criticism. Her pre...

We all have images that we find unwatchable, whether for ethical, political, or sensory and affective reasons. From news coverage of terror attacks to viral videos of police brutality, and from graphic horror films to transgressive artworks, many of the images in our media culture might strike us as unsuitable for viewing. Yet what does it mean to proclaim something “unwatchable”: disturbing, revolting, poor, tedious, or literally inaccessible?With over 50 original essays by leadin...

The renowned philosopher and political theorist presents a summation of his influential work in this series of Columbia University lectures.A pioneer in the fields of modern linguistics and cognitive science, Noam Chomsky is also one of the most avidly read political theorist of our time. In this series of lectures, Chomsky presents more than half a century of philosophical reflection on all three of these areas.In precise yet accessible language, Chomsky e...

"Fascinating..provocative and funny." -- Contax GuideThere has never been a better time to show the world - both gay and nongay - the depth and breadth of the people, the history, and the communities that have been created by gay men and lesbians.Out in All Directions presents a broad picture of the myriad cultures and achievements of gay people in society at large. Every chapter uncovers history, illuminates gay and lesbian life, explodes myths, and breaks n...

Paris Is Burning (Jennie Livingston, 1991) captures the energy, ambition, wit, and struggle of African-American and Latino participants in the 1980s New York drag ball scene. This book contextualizes the film within the longer history of drag balls, the practices of documentary, the fervor of the culture wars, and the development of queer theory and critical race studies.

A Comics Studies Reader offers the best of the new comics scholarship in nearly thirty essays on a wide variety of such comics forms as gag cartoons, editorial cartoons, comic strips, comic books, manga, and graphic novels.The anthology covers the pioneering work of Rodolphe Töpffer, the Disney comics of Carl Barks, and the graphic novels of Art Spiegelman and Chris Ware, as well as Peanuts, romance comics, and superheroes. It explores the stylistic achievements o...

Feminism at the Movies: Understanding Gender in Contemporary Popular Cinema examines the way that contemporary film reflects today’s changing gender roles. The book offers a comprehensive overview of the central issues in feminist film criticism with analyses of over twenty popular contemporary films across a range of genres, such as chick flicks, teen pics, hommecoms, horror, action adventure, indie flicks, and women lawyer films. Contributors explore issues of femininity as well...

Cult Cinema: an Introduction presents the first in-depth academic examination of all aspects of the field of cult cinema, including audiences, genres, and theoretical perspectives.Represents the first exhaustive introduction to cult cinemaOffers a scholarly treatment of a hotly contested topic at the center of current academic debateCovers audience reactions, aesthetics, genres, theories of cult cinema, as well as historical insights into the topi...

Award-winning author David L. Pike offers a unique focus on the crucial quarter-century in Canadian filmmaking when the industry became a viable force on the international stage. Pike provides a lively, personal, and accessible history of the most influential filmmakers and movements of both Anglo-Canadian and Quebecois cinema, from popular movies to art film and everything in between.Along with in-depth studies of key directors, including David Cronenberg, Patricia Rozema and Deny...

While film studies has traditionally treated the presence of the city in film as an urban text operating inside of a cinematic one, this approach has recently evolved into the study of cinema as a technology of place. From this perspective, Documenting Cityscapes explores the way the city has been depicted by nonfiction filmmakers since the late 1970s, paying particular attention to three aesthetic tendencies: documentary landscaping, urban self-portraits, and metafilmic strategie...

Film studies has been a part of higher education curricula in the United States almost since the development of the medium. Although the study of film is dispersed across a range of academic departments, programs, and scholarly organizations, film studies has come to be recognized as a field in its own right. In an era when teaching and scholarship are increasingly interdisciplinary, film studies continues to expand and thrive, attracting new scholars and fresh ideas, direction, and resear...