Film, Visual Culture, and Performing Arts
Feminism's Progress
Explores how popular novels, short stories, and television shows from the United States and Britain illustrate the positive effects of feminism and promote gender equity.
Bay Lodyans
Considers how popular Haitian films not only provide entertainment but also help audiences in Haiti and the diaspora think through daily challenges.
Haight-Ashbury, Psychedelics, and the Birth of Acid Rock
Illuminates the beginnings, downfall, and legacy of the acid-inspired, spontaneous, and playful approach to life and music in Haight-Ashbury from 1964–1967.
Torturous Etiquettes
Explores the “torture” of mannered behavior and the prevalence of etiquette as a theme in classical and contemporary Hollywood and European cinema.
The Sound of Vultures' Wings
Explores the music of the Tibetan Chöd tradition.
Ducktails, Drive-ins, and Broken Hearts
An unflinching look at the triumphs and tragedies of '50s rock and roll, from the biggest stars,
like Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins, to those who barely grabbed the spotlight.
Tourists and Trade
How two roadside craft shops in upstate New York transformed American crafts into a fine art.
Musicology of Religion
Spearheads a new field for the combined study of religion and music, drawing upon theories and methods of the social sciences, ethnomusicology, philosophy, theology, liturgical studies, and cognitive studies.
Following the Ticker
Traces the influence of the stock market on Americans' beliefs about politics.
Perfect Pitch, Third Revised Edition
The autobiography of one of the 20th century’s most innovative and wittiest composers/performers/authors who witnessed the birth of modern music
Crossing Boundaries and Confounding Identity
Examines literary, historical, and cultural portrayals of Chinese women, across centuries and continents.
A Silence from Hitchcock
Extensive meditations on silence in the films of Alfred Hitchcock.
The Touch of the Present
Explores the importance of the body and the senses in educational encounters, drawing out the aesthetic and political dimensions of educational practices.
Distancing Representations in Transgender Film
Argues that transgender representations in film make it more difficult for cisgender people to understand the experiences of transgender people and for transgender people to fully participate in public life.
Ana M. López
Brings together Ana M. López's field-defining essays on Latin American film and media in one indispensable volume.
Life Above the Clouds
The definitive philosophical exploration of the work of pioneering filmmaker Terrence Malick.
Reluctant Sleuths, True Detectives
Explores the figure of the detective as a pursuer of knowledge in four noir films.
The Obscure Substance of Sky
A book of poems and painted images.
Blues on Stage
Tells the story of classic blues singers from Ma Rainey to Bessie Smith.
Philosophical Archaeology
Explores the potential for a novel philosophy of history to be uncovered by tracing the connections between Giorgio Agamben's work (theoretical practice) and contemporary art (artistic practice).
Henry Dreyfuss
Celebrates the design work of Henry Dreyfuss and his associates that revolutionized 20th century industrial design from telephones to trains to thermostats.
Cinema of Discontent
Uses popular films to reveal the tensions generated during Japan’s postwar "economic miracle," challenging the prevailing view that it was a story of great national success.
Bob Dylan's New York
A walking tour and history of Bob Dylan's life and time in New York, from Greenwich Village to Woodstock.
A Philosophy of Music Education
A Philosophy of Music Education is considered the classic text on the relation of aesthetics to the practical teaching and performing of music.
Woman-Centered Brazilian Cinema
Illuminates the complex factors that have helped or hindered creative work by and about women in the twenty-first-century Brazilian film industry.
Free Jazz
A new and accessible introduction to this exciting, controversial, and often misunderstood music, drawing on extensive research, close listening, and the author’s experience as a performer.
Honeymoon Couples and Jurassic Babies
Contextualizes Sabha Theatre historically, politically, and aesthetically, revealing how it expresses a Tamil Brahmin identity that is at once traditional and modern.
Ways of the Hand
A visual and narrative memoir of a lifetime's encounters with 112 trendsetters, musicians, politicians, writers, and ordinary people by a noted folklorist-photographer.
The Hard Sell of Paradise
Traces the complex and contradictory representations of Hawai’i in popular film and television programs from the 1930s to the 1970s.
Orienting Italy
Explores Italian filmmakers' representations of China and the Chinese, both at home and abroad.
Nietzsche in Hollywood
Argues that Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch was a central concern of filmmakers in the 1920s and 1930s.
Punk Rock
Shows how punk rock shaped modern culture around the world.
(White)Washing Our Sins Away
Analyzes how White American mainline Protestants used the internal musical controversies of the turn-of-the-millennium Worship Wars to negotiate their shifting position within the nation's diversifying religious and sociopolitical ecosystems.
Art Activism for an Anticolonial Future
Analyzes socially engaged art practices worldwide, linking them to decolonial struggle and critique.
Gilbert and Sullivan
Highlights the original cast members—both the well-known and the (until now) wholly unknown—who staged the duo's comic operas in Britain and in America.
The Tyranny of Common Sense
Elucidates how neoliberalism rules all areas of life and operates as a form of common sense, taking Mexico as a case study.
The Holiday in His Eye
Presents an original, insightful, and compelling vision of the trajectory of Cavell's oeuvre, one that takes his kinship with Emerson as inextricably bound up with his ever-deepening thinking about movies.
No Jurisdiction
A deeply personal study of post-9/11 film that exposes how genre can frame the shifting meanings of the War on Terror and its impact on American law and culture.
Whiteness at the End of the World
Examines the ways in which post-apocalyptic films express white racial anxiety.
White Cottage, White House
Argues that Irish American masculinity functioned to negotiate, consolidate, and reinforce hegemonic whiteness in Hollywood cinema from 1930 to 1960.
Wonder Strikes
The first book-length examination of the prominent contemporary philosopher William Desmond's approach to aesthetics, art, and literature.
The Cinematographer's Voice
A unique exploration of contemporary filmmaking from cinema’s ultimate insiders.
Action, Action, Action
Studies the force of action, motion, and vision in the early cinema of Hollywood director Raoul Walsh.
Hollywood Films in North Africa and the Middle East
Traces the circulation of Hollywood films in North Africa and the Middle East from the early twentieth century to the present.
Writ on Water
A powerful and original statement on the nature of film and the intimate relation of “film imagination” to our lives as human beings in the world.
Screening #MeToo
Considers how Hollywood films since the 1960s have both reflected and shaped attitudes toward rape and sexual violence.
Sharkey
The incredible, true story of the twentieth century's greatest performing sea lion and the man who trained him.
The White Indians of Mexican Cinema
Examines the filmic representation of Whiteness as Indigeneity and its role in mediating racial politics in Mexico.
Dimensions of Aesthetic Encounters
A novel fusing of multiple approaches and range of examples exploring the dimensions, objects, and import of aesthetic encounters.
Mary Frank
Presents sculpture, painting, drawings, prints, and photographs from throughout the artist's illustrious career.
Ida Rubinstein
The critical biography of a dynamic and under-represented figure who produced and starred in some of the most innovative works of her day.
The Coming Death
Explores questions of death and mortality in several key texts of East Asian literature and cinema.
Pushing Past the Human in Latin American Cinema
Sheds light on emergent Latin America cinema that addresses the politics of environmental destruction, the unevenness of climate change consequences, and new ways of visualizing the world beyond the human.
A Voyage with Hitchcock
Extensive meditations on the theme of the voyage in six Hitchcock films: Psycho, The 39 Steps, The Birds, Dial M for Murder, Rich and Strange, and Suspicion.
Seeing Symphonically
Looks at how a group of aesthetically innovative independent films contested and imagined alternatives to urban planning in midcentury New York.
Was It Yesterday?
Explores how nostalgia operates in contemporary US film and television.
Alton's Paradox
Uses extensive archival research to explore the manifold contributions of foreign film workers to emerging film industries in Latin America from the 1930s to early 1940s.
Unholy Trinity
Examines representations of religion in Mexican film from the Golden Age to the early twenty-first century.
Avant-Gardes in Crisis
Charts underexamined genealogies of minoritarian aesthetic responses to the multiple crises of the long 1970s.
Race and the Suburbs in American Film
Explores how suburban space and the body are racialized in American film.
Encountering the Impossible
The first academic explanation for how spectators use their imaginations as part of the experience and appreciation of popular fantasy filmmaking.
The Godfather and Sicily
Offers a distinctive interpretation of The Godfather as a novel and film sequence.
Perpetual Movement
Offers both a production history and a close analysis, with a chapter for each of the film's eleven shots.
Luchino Visconti and the Alchemy of Adaptation
Examines the place of book-to-film adaptations by one of Italy's most famous postwar film directors.
Curtains of Light
Provides a new way of thinking about film's relation to theatre.
Premises and Problems
Discusses world literature and cinema from the perspective of literary languages and film traditions that do not hold a hegemonic position.
The Musical, Second Edition
A complete introduction to musical theater from its roots in the eighteenth century through today, written by a master historian.
Rock on Record
Rock on Record shows students how to listen to and enjoy the rich repertory of rock records made between the 1950s and 1980s.
Mexico Unmanned
Demonstrates how transhistorical myths of masculinity are both perpetuated and challenged in recent Mexican cinema.
Digital Meets Handmade
Embraces the problems and solutions posed by the dynamic dance of digital technology with the traditions of craftsmanship and perceived value in jewelry.
Creative Inquiry
Introduces both undergraduate students and general readers to the exploratory mindset and hands-on skills essential to the cultivation of creativity.
Life after the Revolution
Shares the unique story of a Christmas tree farm in Poughkeepsie, New York, where, for over four decades, women artists boldly built a space where they could create community and art together.
The Hebrew Orient
Examines the role that images of Palestine played in the construction of prewar Jewish American identity.
Capitán Latinoamérica
Analyzes contemporary superhero-themed cinema, television, and web series in Latin America.
Giallo!
Traces the giallo mystery/horror genre from its genesis in Italian cinema of the 1960s and 1970s to its contemporary place in the global cult-film canon.
Tastemakers and Tastemaking
Considers how and why taste persists in the analysis of Mexican film and television by looking at key figures and their impact on the curation of violence.
Mind Reeling
Across a variety of genres, shows how mental disorders are depicted in cinema.
Convenient Criticism
Explains why and how local critical reporting can exist in China despite the kinds of media control that are the hallmarks of authoritarian rule.
Knowing It When You See It
Lively analysis of how Henry James's fiction anticipates later filmmakers' concerns with what we can see and what we can know.
Qorbanot
A dynamic dialogue of poetry and art that reimagines the ancient, biblical concept of sacrifice.
Kathy Goodell
Explores the through-lines in the artist's work across painting, drawing, and sculpture; examining a mystic language that loops between disciplines, coasts, and generations.
Merleau-Ponty at the Gallery
A study of the significance of the visual arts in Merleau-Ponty's aesthetics in relation to the work of five artists not known or discussed by him.
Revealing/Reveiling Shanghai
Examines Shanghai both as a real city and an imaginary locale, from diverse cultural and disciplinary perspectives.
Miraculous Realism
An authoritative study of this postsecular film movement from the French-Belgian border region that rose to prominence at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Postcolonial Lack
Examines representations of surplus enjoyment in postcolonial literature and film to focus on self-other relations rather than difference.
Letters from Hollywood
Engaging essays on a wide spectrum of Hollywood directors and the films they created.
The Slapstick Camera
Demonstrates that slapstick film comedies display a canny and sometimes profound understanding of their medium.
Funny How?
Uses comedy skits, from Monty Python to Key and Peele, to probe how humor works.
Improv for Democracy
Explores how improv-based teaching and training methods can bridge differences and promote the communication, leadership, and civil skills our world urgently needs.
Epistemic Responsibility
Develops a new kind of epistemological position that highlights virtue over more standard epistemological theories.
Jan Sawka
Shows how Sawka’s experience as a political refugee, and his working method, which emphasized imagery drawn from memory, resulted in powerful works that speak of and to the universal human condition.
The Great War in Hollywood Memory, 1918-1939
Assesses how America's film industry remembered World War I during the interwar period.
Word, Chant, and Song
An accessible introduction to the centrality of word, chant, and song in the Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, and Sikh traditions.
Cinematic Skepticism
Drawing on the film-philosophies of Stanley Cavell and Gilles Deleuze, argues that skepticism is an ethical problem that pervades contemporary film.
Sounds Like Helicopters
Explores how modernist films use classical music in ways that restore the music’s original subversive energy.
Forms of Disappointment
Analyzes parallel developments in post–Cold War literature and film from Cuba and Angola to trace a shared history of revolutionary enthusiasm, disappointment, and solidarity.
Brute Force
Considers how dangerous beasts in horror films illuminate the human-animal relationship.
Victorian Negatives
Argues that the photographic negative gives a new way of understanding Victorian debates surrounding origins and copies as well as reality and representation.
What Remains
Combining photography and essay, presents a speculative portrait of a Jewish immigrant living out the end of his days in New York's midcentury mental health system.
Totally Dedicated
Catalog of the first museum exhibition of Leonard Contino, a Brooklyn-born, self-taught abstract artist whose tenacious exploration of pictorial space spanned a fifty-year career.