In this deeply researched and vividly written volume, Melvyn Stokes illuminates the origins, production, reception and continuing history of this ground-breaking, aesthetically brilliant, and yet highly controversial movie. By going back to the original archives, particularly the NAACP and D. W. Griffith Papers, Stokes explodes many of the myths surrounding The Birth of a Nation (1915). Yet the story that remains is fascinating: the longest American film of its time, Griffith's fi...

Cinema Memories brings together and analyses the memories of almost a thousand people of going to the cinema in Britain during the 1960s. It offers a fresh perspective on the social, cultural and film history of what has come to be seen as an iconic decade, with the release of films such as A Taste of Honey, The Sound of Music, Darling, Blow-Up, Alfie, The Graduate, and Bonnie and Clyde.Drawing on first-hand accounts, authors Mel...

Hollywood Abroad is the first book to examine the reception of Hollywood movies by non-American audiences. Although numerous books on film history have analyzed the ways in which American films came to dominate world markets, there has so far been very little published work on how audiences outside the United States have responded to Hollywood-produced films. Hollywood Abroad explores the reception of U.S. films in Britain, France, Belgium, Turkey, Australia, India, Japan, and Central Afri...

Melvyn Stokes's study of the 1946 classic Gilda describes the film's production and reception history, as well as addressing Rita Hayworth's complex star persona and ethnicity identity; Gilda's status as a 'noir' film; and what the film had to say about relations between men and women in a world transformed by war.

The first films made by British comedian Charlie Chaplin in California reached France in March 1915. They had an instant appeal for wartime French audiences-- "Charlot," the name under which Chaplin became known in France, quickly became a screen celebrity and a focal point for France's burgeoning film culture. His supporters ranged from members of the working-class through film writers such as Louis Delluc, who wrote the first book on Chaplin as an artist in any language, to members of th...

In this deeply researched and vividly written volume, Melvyn Stokes illuminates the origins, production, reception and continuing history of this ground-breaking, aesthetically brilliant, and yet highly controversial movie. By going back to the original archives, particularly the NAACP and D. W. Griffith Papers, Stokes explodes many of the myths surrounding The Birth of a Nation (1915). Yet the story that remains is fascinating: the longest American film of its time, Griffith's fi...

This collection brings together many of the world’s leading scholars on race and film to re-consider the legacy and impact of D.W. Griffith’s deeply racist 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation. While this film is often cited, there is a considerable dearth of substantial research on its initial impact and global reach. These essays fill important gaps in the history of the film, including essential work on its sources, international reception, and African American responses. This book ...

Winner of the National Book Award for NonfictionFinalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for HistoryFrom the leading historian and Guggenheim fellow, an electrifying story of the sensational murder trial that divided a city and ignited the civil rights struggle.Arc of Justice is a necessary contribution to what seems like an insoluble moral dilemma: race in America.” —Paul Hendrickso...

“Fascinating . . . a lively and perceptive cultural history.” —Annette Gordon-Reed, The New YorkerIn this wide-ranging, brilliantly researched work, David S. Reynolds traces the factors that made Uncle Tom’s Cabin the most influential novel ever written by an American. Upon its 1852 publication, the novel’s vivid depiction of slavery polarized its American readership, ultimately widening the rift that led to the Civil War. Reynolds also charts the...

An updated edition of this definitive history of Harper—a fascinating look into the history of American letters from the unique perspective of one of the country's most distinguished and enduring publishers—now with a new introduction that brings the book up to the present day. From Moby Dick to Huckleberry Finn—but not Alice in Wonderland, which was rejected— The House of Harper is a sweeping trip through American letters, offering anecdotes and stories...

Making Whiteness is a profoundly important work that explains how and why whiteness came to be such a crucial, embattled--and distorting--component of twentieth-century American identity. In intricately textured detail and with passionately mastered analysis, Grace Elizabeth Hale shows how, when faced with the active citizenship of their ex-slaves after the Civil War, white southerners re-established their dominance through a cultural system based on violence and physical ...

A finalist for the 1972 National Book Award, hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "brilliant" and "provocative," Nathan Huggins' Harlem Renaissance was a milestone in the study of African-American life and culture. Now this classic history is being reissued, with a new foreword by acclaimed biographer Arnold Rampersad. As Rampersad notes, "Harlem Renaissance remains an indispensable guide to the facts and features, the puzzles and mysteries, of one of the ...