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)

From one of the masters of twentieth-century cinema, an indispensable and entertaining guide to a visionary new form of moviemaking that can be appreciated by the avid film buff and general movie lover alike. Keenly aware that advancements in digital tools have literally revolutionized every technological aspect of cinema over the last twenty-five years, Francis Ford Coppola is...(展开全部)

In Revolution and Form, Jianhua Chen offers a detailed analysis of several early works by Mao Dun, focusing in particular on their engagement with themes of modernity and revolution, gender and desire. One of the leading authors of the early twentieth century May Fourth period, Mao Dun had a complicated relationship with both the Communist Party and the women’s liberation movem...(展开全部)

What role did cinema play in the Chinese Communist Party’s political project of shaping ideal socialist citizens in the early People’s Republic? In Moulding the Socialist Subject, Xiaoning Lu deploys case studies from popular film genres, movie star culture and rural film exhibition practices to argue that Chinese cinema in 1949–1966, at once an important political instrument, ...(展开全部)

This book examines the work of one of the most famous Chinese artists of all time. In this study, the first full-length work on Shitao in a Western language, Jonathan Hay provides a theoretically sophisticated analysis of this artist by undertaking a social history of his achievement. By focusing on different social, political, biographical, economic, religious and aesthetic is...(展开全部)

This book examines the work of one of the most famous Chinese artists of all time. In this study, the first full-length work on Shitao in a Western language, Jonathan Hay provides a theoretically sophisticated analysis of this artist by undertaking a social history of his achievement. By focusing on different social, political, biographical, economic, religious and aesthetic is...(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)

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)

Modern civilization, Bauman argues, promised to make our lives understandable and open to our control. This has not happened and today we no longer believe it ever will. In this book, now available in paperback, Bauman argues that our postmodern age is the time for reconciliation with ambivalence, we must learn how to live in an incurably ambiguous world.