From melodramas to experimental documentaries to anime , mass media in Japan constitute a key site in which the nation’s social memory is articulated, disseminated, and contested. Through a series of stimulating case studies, this volume examines the political and cultural representations of Japan’s past, showing how they have reinforced personal and collective narratives while also formulating new cultural meanings, both on a local scale and i ...
From Christian missionary publications to the media strategies employed by today’s NGOs, this interdisciplinary collection explores the entangled histories of humanitarianism and media. It traces the emergence of humanitarian imagery in the West and investigates how the meanings of suffering and aid have been constructed in a period of evolving mass communication, demonstrating the extent to which many seemingly new phenomena in fact have long h ...
The Mediterranean island of Cyprus is the site of enduring political, military, and economic conflict. This interdisciplinary collection takes Cyprus as a geographical, cultural and political point of reference for understanding how conflict is mediated, represented, reconstructed, experienced, and transformed. Through methodologically diverse case studies of a wide range of topics—including public art, urban spaces, and print, broadcast and dig ...
Though unjustly neglected by English-language audiences, Spanish film and television not only represent a remarkably influential and vibrant cultural industry; they are also a fertile site of innovation in the production of “transmedia” works that bridge narrative forms. In Spanish Lessons , Paul Julian Smith provides an engaging exploration of visual culture in an era of collapsing genre boundaries, accelerating technological change, and polit ...
Despite the recent explosion of scholarly interest in “star studies,” Brazilian film has received comparatively little attention. As this volume demonstrates, however, the richness of Brazilian stardom extends well beyond the ubiquitous Carmen Miranda. Among the studies assembled here are fascinating explorations of figures such as Eliane Lage (the star attraction of Sao Paulo’s Vera Cruz studios), cult horror movie auteur Coffin Joe, and Lazaro ...
By the time the Berlin Wall collapsed, the cinema of the German Democratic Republic—to the extent it was considered at all—was widely regarded as a footnote to European film history, with little of enduring value. Since then, interest in East German cinema has exploded, inspiring innumerable festivals, books, and exhibits on the GDR’s rich and varied filmic output. In Re-Imagining DEFA , leading international experts take stock of this vibrant ...
Long overlooked by scholars and critics, the history and aesthetics of German television have only recently begun to attract serious, sustained attention, and then largely within Germany. This ambitious volume, the first in English on the subject, provides a much-needed corrective in the form of penetrating essays on the distinctive theories, practices, and social-historical contexts that have defined television in Germany. Encompassing developm ...
