When a work of art shows an interest in its own status as a work of art—either by reference to itself or to other works—we have become accustomed to calling this move "meta." While scholars and critics have, for decades, acknowledged reflexivity in films, it is only in Metacinema, for the first time, that a group of leading and emerging film theorists join to enthusiastically debate the meanings and implications of the meta for cinema. In new essays on generative films, including ...

From the Academy Award-winning Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Academy Award-nominated Adaptation (2002) to the cult classic Being John Malkovich (1999), screenwriter Charlie Kaufman is widely admired for his innovative, philosophically resonant films. Although he also began directing with Synecdoche, New York in 2008, most fans and critics refer to "Kaufman films" the way they would otherwise discuss works by directors such as Woody All...

Stanley Cavell was, by many accounts, America's greatest philosophical thinker of film. Like Bazin in France and Perkins in England, Cavell did not just transform the American capacity to take film as a subject for philosophical criticism; he had to first invent that legitimacy. Part of that effort involved the creation of several key now-canonical texts in film studies, among them the seminal The World Viewed along with Pursuits of Happiness and Contesting Tears...

In Movies with Stanley Cavell in Mind, some of the scholars who have become essential for our understanding of Stanley Cavell's writing on film gather to use his landmark contributions to help us read new films-from Hollywood and elsewhere-that exist beyond his immediate reach and reading. In extending the scope of Cavell's film philosophy, we naturally find ourselves contending with it and amending it, as the case may be. Through a series of interpretive vignettes, the group effo...

This collection of new work on the philosophical importance of television starts from a model for reading films proposed by Stanley Cavell, whereby film in its entirety—actors and production included—brings its own intelligence to its realization. In turn, this intelligence educates us as viewers, leading us to recognize and appreciate our individual cinephilic tastes, and to know ourselves and each other better. This reading is even more valid for TV series. Yet, in spite of the progress ...

Some of the people who knew Stanley Cavell best--or know his work most intimately--are gathered in Inheriting Stanley Cavell to lend critical insight into the once and future legacy of this American titan of thought. Former students, colleagues, long-time friends, as well as distant admirers, explore moments when their personal experiences of Cavell's singular philosophical and literary illuminations have, as he put it, “risen to the level of philosophical significance.”Ma...

This thought-provoking collection gathers a roster of seasoned Emerson scholars to address anew the way non-American writers and texts influenced Emerson, while also discussing the manner in which Emerson’s writings influenced a diverse array of non-American authors. This volume includes new, original, and engaging research on crucial topics that have for the most part been absent from recent critical literature. While the motivations for this project will be familiar to scholars of litera...

The polysemous German word Geschlecht -- denoting gender, genre, kind, kinship, species, race, and somehow also more -- exemplifies the most pertinent questions of the translational, transdisciplinary, transhistorical, and transnational structures of the contemporary humanities: What happens when texts, objects, practices, and concepts are transferred or displaced from one language, tradition, temporality, or form to another? What is readily transposed, what resists relocation, an...

Attention Spans' chronological review of Garrett Stewart's critical approach tracks and maps the evolution of intersecting disciplines from late New Criticism through structuralism, deconstruction, narrative theory (by way of narratography), poetics, and media studies, in which Stewart's has been so persistent and so eloquent a voice. Excerpts from his twenty books are framed by editorial retrospect, then linked by Stewart's own commentary on the variety – and underlying vectors –...

In his first book of essays, Garrett Stewart demonstrates and reframes his formidable powers as a close reader of a vast range of texts: novels, films, songs, book art, digital media, and more.Among the most prolific and exacting readers of his generation, Stewart is renowned for his virtuosic interventions across a number of humanistic fields, including prose narrative, screen studies, and literary theory. Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 20...

For more than a century readers have found Herman Melville’s writing rich with philosophical ideas, yet there has been relatively little written about what, exactly, is philosophically significant about his work and why philosophers are so attracted to Melville in particular. This volume addresses this silence through a series of essays that: (1) examine various philosophical contexts for Melville’s work, (2) take seriously Melville’s writings as philosophy, and (3) consider how modern phi...

From the dust of the Montana plains to the farthest reaches of the cosmos, Terrence Malick’s films have enchanted audiences with transcendent images of nature, humanity, and grace for nearly fifty years. The contributors in this volume explore the profound implications of Malick’s stories, images, processes, and convictions as they offer comprehensive studies of the ten completed films of Terrence Malick. Each chapter takes a reflective and retrospective approach, considering new interpret...