A Companion to Film Theory

This volume of specially commissioned work by experts in the field of film studies provides a comprehensive overview of the field. Its international and interdisciplinary approach will have a broad appeal to those interested in this multifaceted subject.

• Provides a major collection of specially commissioned work by experts in the field of film studies.
• Represents material under a variety of headings, including class, race, gender, queer theory, nation, stars, ethnography, authorship, and spectatorship.
• Offers an international approach to the subject, including coverage of topics such as genre, image, sound, editing, culture industries, early cinema, classical Hollywood, and TV relations and technology.
• Includes concise chapter-by-chapter accounts of the background and current approaches to each topic, followed by a prognostication on the future.
• Considers cinema studies in relation to other forms of knowledge, such as critical studies, anthropology, and literature.

1. Introduction: Toby Miller.

2. Authorship: James Naremore.

3. Genre: Sarah Berry.

4. Enunciation and Narration: André Gaudreault and François Jost.

5. Film Editing: Lucy Fischer.

6. Film Semiotics: Warren Buckland.

7. Cognitivism: Greg Currie.

8. Psychoanalysis: Richard Allen.

9. Spectatorship and Subjectivity: E. Deidre Pribram.

10. Laura Mulvey Meets Cathrine Tramell Meets the She-Man: Counter-History, Reclamation, and Incongruity in Lesbian, Gay, and Queer Film and Media Criticism: Julia Erhart.

11. Is There Class in this Text?: The Repression of Class in Film and Cultural Studies : David James.

12. Culture Industries: Douglas Kellner.

13. The Political Economy of Film: Janet Wasko.

14. The Work of Theory in the Age of Digital Transformation: Henry Jenkins.

15. Cultural Exchange: Tom O'Regan.

16. Anthropology for the World: Mass Media: Faye Ginsburg.

17. Psycho's Bad Timing: The Sensual Obsessions of Film Theory: Toby Miller.

18. Historical Allegory: Ismail Xavier.

19. Every Picture Tells a Story: José Guadalupe Posada's Photocinematic Graphic Art: Charles Ramirez Berg.

20. On "Historical Poetics," Narrative, and Interpretation: Ira Bhaskar.

Index.

"A vital contribution to contemporary studies in film and culture." Journal of Film and Video

"[Offers] new and diverse directions which film theory can and must address … pivotal." Scope: The Online Journal of Film Studies

Toby Miller is Professor in the Cinema Studies Department at New York University. He is the author or editor of a wide range of work in cultural studies, including A Companion to Cultural Studies (Ed. Blackwell Publishing, 2001), Technologies of Truth (1998) and (with Alec McHoul) Popular Culture and Everyday Life (1998). He is also co-editor of the journal Social Text and (with Robert Stam) co-editor of Film and Theory: An Anthology (Blackwell Publishing, 2000).

Robert Stam is Professor in the Cinema Studies Department at New York University. His many books include Film Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell Publishing, 1999); Tropical Multiculturalism: A Comparative History of Race in Brazilian Cinema and Culture (1997); Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media, with Ella Shohat (1994), which won the Katherine Singer Kovocs “Best Film Book Award”; and Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film (1992). He is also co-editor (with Toby Miller) of Film and Theory: An Anthology (Blackwell Publishing, 2000).

This volume of specially commissioned work by experts in the field of film studies provides a comprehensive overview of the field. Its international and interdisciplinary approach will have a broad appeal to those interested in this multifaceted subject.

This major film theory collection:

• Represents material under a variety of headings, including class, race, gender, queer theory, nation, stars, ethnography, authorship, and spectatorship
• Offers an international approach to the subject, including coverage of topics such as genre, image, sound, editing, postmodernism, culture industries, early cinema, classical Hollywood, and TV relations and technology
• Includes concise chapter-by-chapter accounts of the background and current approaches to each topic, followed by a prognostication on the future
• Considers cinema studies in relation to other forms of knowledge, such as critical studies, anthropology, and literature.

A Companion to Film Theory provides the ideal reference source for students of film theory in departments of cultural studies, media studies, literature, and sociology.