Category: Media Studies

April 2, 2020

Comedies of Catastrophe, Contagion, and Self-Quarantine: A Spectral Playlist for the Impromptu Apocalypse

One of my favorite books to have worked on from the past few years is Maggie Hennefeld’s  Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes. In this post she offers a list of comedies featuring women who focus on societal catastrophe,...

April 1, 2020

Join Philip Leventhal on a Tour of Our New Books from the Film and Culture Series

Hello, my name is Philip Leventhal, and I acquire new books in film and media studies at Columbia University Press. SCMS is always one of my favorite conferences, so it is particularly disappointing not to be able to attend this...

April 1, 2020

Welcome to Our SCMS 2020 Virtual Exhibit Booth!

We are disappointed that we are not able to attend the Society for Media Studies (SCMS) Annual Conference. We will miss all the great conversations and sense of community. Since the COVID-19 virus has many of us sitting home and...

March 31, 2020

Announcing Our 2020 Film, Media, and Journalism Studies Catalog

Letter from the editors: We are pleased to be sharing with you Columbia University Press’s 2020 Film, Media, and Journalism Studies catalog. The books featured here reflect the press’s commitment to publishing innovative works examining the multifaceted ways in which...

March 26, 2020

Book Excerpt! Perpetrator Cinema, By Raya Morag (preface)

“This compelling book will matter as long as mass atrocities persist. Focused on the Cambodian genocide, Morag addresses a new phase in how we confront such events: films where survivors confront perpetrators face-to-face. These confrontations bring the visceral truth borne...

March 24, 2020

Q&A: Raya Morag on the #MeToo Movement, Cambodian Cinema, and the Case of Forced Marriage and Rape

“This compelling book will matter as long as mass atrocities persist. Focused on the Cambodian genocide, Morag addresses a new phase in how we confront such events: films where survivors confront perpetrators face-to-face. These confrontations bring the visceral truth borne...

February 14, 2020

“Not cinema”?: Joker (2019) and the State of the (Superhero) Nation in 2020

By Terence McSweeney and Rebecca Cohen

Joaquin Phoenix claimed the Oscar for best actor for his performance in Joker, solidifying the movie’s position at the forefront of current cinema. Terence McSweeney, author of Avengers Assemble!: Critical Perspectives on the Marvel Cinematic Universe and a forthcoming volume...

February 10, 2020

Book Excerpt! A Piece of the Action, By Eithne Quinn

“Well-written, meticulously researched, critical, and smart, A Piece of the Action may be the most important book on black American cinema in the last quarter century. Enjoyable and highly informative, this book will quickly emerge as a classic and must-read...

February 6, 2020

Dismantling Hollywood’s Whiteness Problem

By Eithne Quinn

“Well-written, meticulously researched, critical, and smart, A Piece of the Action may be the most important book on black American cinema in the last quarter century. Enjoyable and highly informative, this book will quickly emerge as a classic and must-read among those...

February 4, 2020

“For Hollywood and Miss Sharon!” Cinetextuality in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood

By Ron Wilson

Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood has garnered plenty of attention as a strong contender at the Oscars this weekend. To better understand the buzz, Ron Wilson, author of a forthcoming volume on Tarantino for the Directors’ Cuts...

December 24, 2019

The Resurgence of Nostalgia: How Suburban Fantastic Cinema Dominated the Late 2010s

“A master class in film genre criticism. It offers careful and close analysis of the films in its corpus, and is a great example of how much meaning is latent in popular films that are sometimes dismissed as merely juvenile or...

October 14, 2019

Author Event: Walter Bernard and Milton Glaser Discuss Mag Men with Anne Quito

Location SVA MA Design Research, Writing and Criticism, 2nd floor 136 West 21st Street New York, NY 10010 Date and Time: Tue, December 3, 2019 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM EST For more than fifty years, Walter Bernard and Milton Glaser have revolutionized the...