Between 1870 and 1920, hundreds of women died from laughing too hard—or so a spate of sensationalist obituaries claimed. How could laughter be fatal, and what do these reports of women’s risible deaths tell us about the politics of female joy? Maggie Hennefeld reveals the forgotten histories of “hysterical laughter,” exploring how women’s amusement has been theorized and demoni...(展开全部)

Between 1870 and 1920, hundreds of women died from laughing too hard—or so a spate of sensationalist obituaries claimed. How could laughter be fatal, and what do these reports of women’s risible deaths tell us about the politics of female joy? Maggie Hennefeld reveals the forgotten histories of “hysterical laughter,” exploring how women’s amusement has been theorized and demoni...(展开全部)

In this groundbreaking investigation into the nature and meanings of melodrama in American culture between 1880 and 1920, Ben Singer offers a challenging new reevaluation of early American cinema and the era that spawned it. Singer looks back to the sensational or "blood and thunder" melodramas (e.g., The Perils of Pauline, The Hazards of Helen, etc.) and uncovers a fundamenta...(展开全部)

Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe is internationally acclaimed for his groundbreaking, incisive examination of humanity’s struggle through modernity. In Death by Water, his recurring protagonist and literary alter ego returns to his hometown village in search of a red suitcase fabled to hold documents revealing the details of his father’s death during World War II: details that w...(展开全部)

Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe is internationally acclaimed for his groundbreaking, incisive examination of humanity’s struggle through modernity. In Death by Water, his recurring protagonist and literary alter ego returns to his hometown village in search of a red suitcase fabled to hold documents revealing the details of his father’s death during World War II: details that w...(展开全部)

Influenza was the great killer of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the so-called 'Russian flu' killed around 1 million people across Europe in 1889-93 - including the second-in-line to the British throne, the Duke of Clarence. The Spanish flu of 1918, meanwhile, would kill 50 million people - nearly 3% of the world's population. Here, Mark Honigsbaum outlines the his...(展开全部)

Influenza was the great killer of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the so-called 'Russian flu' killed around 1 million people across Europe in 1889-93 - including the second-in-line to the British throne, the Duke of Clarence. The Spanish flu of 1918, meanwhile, would kill 50 million people - nearly 3% of the world's population. Here, Mark Honigsbaum outlines the his...(展开全部)

In the twenty years preceding the First World War, cinema rapidly developed from a fairground curiosity into a major industry and social institution, a source of information and entertainment for millions of people. Only recently have film scholars and historians begun to study these early years of cinema in their own right and not simply as first steps towards the classical na...(展开全部)

In the twenty years preceding the First World War, cinema rapidly developed from a fairground curiosity into a major industry and social institution, a source of information and entertainment for millions of people. Only recently have film scholars and historians begun to study these early years of cinema in their own right and not simply as first steps towards the classical na...(展开全部)

A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema marks a new era of feminist film scholarship. The twenty essays collected here demonstrate how feminist historiographies at once alter and enrich ongoing debates over visuality and identification, authorship, stardom, and nationalist ideologies in cinema and media studies. Drawing extensively on archival research, the collection yields startli...(展开全部)