For far too long, the cultural and historical narratives about film have overlooked the contributions of Black women directors. This book remedies this omission by highlighting the trajectory of the culturally significant work of Black women directors in the U.S., from the under-examined pioneers of the silent era to the contemporary Black women directors in Hollywood.  
 

Drawing from a full range of Star Wars media, including comics, television, children’s books, and fan films, Carmelo Esterrich explores how these stories set in a galaxy far far away reflect issues that hit closer to home on such topics as authoritarianism, colonialism, xenophobia, sexuality, and gender norms.

Covering such films as Metropolis, Dr. Strangelove, Contagion, and Avengers: Endgame, this book provides a lively overview of apocalypse cinema, including alien invasion movies, nuclear annihilation stories, and films where nature itself threatens humanity through climate change or deadly diseases.

Looking at everything from classic movies like James Whale’s The Old Dark House to contemporary works like Hereditary, The Conjuring, and the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House, Dahlia Schweitzer explores why haunted homes have become a prime stage for dramatizing anxieties about family, gender, race, and economic collapse.

Putting Asian and European musicals into conversation with Hollywood classics like Singin’ in the Rain and La La Land, this study demonstrates the flexibility and durability of the genre. It explores how the movie musical mediates between nostalgia and technical innovation, while foregrounding the experiences of women, immigrants and people of color.

Alternative Realities explores how the distinctions between cinematic fantasy and filmic realism are more porous than we might think by examining the emotional realism of superhero movies like Wonder Woman, the trickery of virtual reality movies like The Matrix, and the ironic gestures of mockumentaries like This is Spinal Tap.

This book offers readers a concise look at over a century of femmes fatales on both the silver screen and the TV screen, from Theda Bara and Barbara Stanwyck to Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh, considering how this figure embodies Hollywood’s contradictory attitudes toward female ambition, independence, and sexuality.

Sports Movies covers a broad spectrum of baseball, basketball, football, and boxing films. Describing the traditional formulas that have made these movies such crowd-pleasers, it also explores how the genre’s attitudes have changed over the years, especially regarding key issues like class, race, masculinity, and women in sports.

Covering everything from chess to football, from Saving Private Ryan to American Sniper, and from Call of Duty to drone interfaces, War Games is an essential guide for anyone seeking to understand the militarization of American culture, offering a compact yet comprehensive look at how we play with images of war.

 

Transgender Cinema reveals the scope of how trans people have been depicted on screen, starting with Charlie Chaplin’s comic drag scenes and culminating in current hits like Transparent and A Fantastic Woman. It analyzes classic Hollywood movies, indie films, documentaries, world cinema, television, and trans filmmakers and actors.