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Science Fiction against the Margins

Cinematic Futures, Global Imaginaries

By Chon A. Noriega, Maya Montañez Smukler, Nicole Ucedo

Explores independently produced media that uses science fiction to address societal and political issues

Today the genre of science fiction is widely associated with big-budget American films featuring space invaders and lab-made monsters. Outside of mainstream...

Korean Pop Culture beyond Asia

Race and Reception

By David C. Oh, Benjamin Min Han

Showcases the dynamism of cross-cultural engagement with Korean media

Korean media has exploded in popularity across the globe in the past decade: BTS and other K-pop groups have packed stadiums, Parasite garnered record-breaking critical success, The...

Games and Play in Chinese and Sinophone Cultures

By Li Guo, Douglas Eyman, Hongmei Sun

From ancient gameboards to Honor of Kings, games as cultural agents

Games as global and connected phenomena have been examined in the rising scholarly field of game studies, but relatively little has been published on the...

"There Are No Hispanic Stars!"

Collected Writings of a Latino Film Critic in Hollywood, 1921–1939

By Gabriel Navarro. Edited and translated by Colin Gunckel and Laura Isabel Serna

Selected writings by early LA cultural critic Gabriel Navarro, in English for the first time

In the 1920s and 1930s a uniquely Mexican American entertainment culture flourished across the southwestern United States. Spanish-language newspapers offered theater...

Menacing Environments

Ecohorror in Contemporary Nordic Cinema

By Benjamin Bigelow

Analyzes a film genre's confrontation of a regional identity

Known for their progressive environmental policies and nature-loving citizens, Nordic countries also produce what may seem a counterintuitive film genre: ecohorror, where distinctions between humans and nature...

Lahore Cinema

Between Realism and Fable

By Iftikhar Dadi

A pioneering analysis of exemplary feature films

Commercial cinema has been among the most powerful vectors of social and aesthetic modernization in South Asia. So argues Iftikhar Dadi in his provocative examination of cinema produced between...

The Story of Propaganda in 50 Images

By David Welch

From ancient Greek coinage to the sound bites of modern-day political spin doctors, propaganda has existed for thousands of years. But it was in the twentieth century that the art of persuasively communicating ideas truly...

Racial Erotics

Gay Men of Color, Sexual Racism, and the Politics of Desire

By C. Winter Han

Finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Studies

Finalist for the 2022 Randy Shilts Award, sponsored by The Publishing Triangle

Honorable Mention for the 2024 John Leo and Dana Heller Award for Best Single...

The Borders of AIDS

Race, Quarantine, and Resistance

By Karma R. Chávez.

Winner of the 2022 Book of the Year Award, sponsored by the Latina & Latino Communication Studies Division of the National Communication Association

Winner of the 2022 Diamond Anniversary Book Award, sponsored by the National Communication...

Thai Cinema Uncensored

By Matthew Hunt

In this first full-length study on the topic, Matthew Hunt—with access to rare and controversial films—provides a history of film censorship in Thailand. Hunt outlines its beginnings in the country, when films were censored by...

South Asian Filmscapes

Transregional Encounters

By Elora Halim Chowdhury, Esha Niyogi De

New political realities and shared histories connect film cultures across borders

In South Asia massive anticolonial movements in the twentieth century created nation-states and reset national borders, forming the basis for emerging film cultures. Following the...

Circulating the Code

Print Media and Legal Knowledge in Qing China

By Ting Zhang

Contrary to longtime assumptions about the insular nature of imperial China’s legal system, Circulating the Code demonstrates that in the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) most legal books were commercially published and available to anyone who could...

Return to the Land of the Head Hunters

Edward S. Curtis, the Kwakwaka'wakw, and the Making of Modern Cinema

By Brad Evans, Aaron Glass, Bill Holm

Photographer Edward Curtis’s 1914 orchestrally scored melodrama In the Land of the Head Hunters was one of the first US films to feature an Indigenous cast. This landmark of early silent cinema was an intercultural...

Mediating Islam

Cosmopolitan Journalisms in Muslim Southeast Asia

By Janet Steele

Broadening an overly narrow definition of Islamic journalism, Janet Steele examines day-to-day reporting practices of Muslim professionals, from conservative scripturalists to pluralist cosmopolitans, at five exemplary news organizations in Malaysia and Indonesia. At Sabili, established...

Network Sovereignty

Building the Internet across Indian Country

By Marisa Elena Duarte

In 2012, the United Nations General Assembly determined that affordable Internet access is a human right, critical to citizen participation in democratic governments. Given the significance of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to social and...

Reporting for China

How Chinese Correspondents Work with the World

By Pál Nyíri

While Western media are shrinking their foreign correspondent networks, Chinese media, for the first time in history, are rapidly expanding worldwide. The Chinese government is financing most of this growth, hoping to strengthen its influence...

Roy Andersson’s “Songs from the Second Floor”

Contemplating the Art of Existence

By Ursula Lindqvist

Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson’s celebrated and enigmatic film Songs from the Second Floor, his first feature film in twenty-five years, won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000. The “songs” of...

Zina Saro-Wiwa

Did You Know We Taught Them How to Dance?

By Amy L. Powell. With Ebiegberi Joe Alagoa, Stephanie LeMenager, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Taiye Selasi, and Zina Saro-Wiwa

Zina Saro-Wiwa: Did You Know We Taught Them How to Dance? is the first publication on the work of Zina Saro-Wiwa, a British-Nigerian video artist and filmmaker based in Brooklyn. Occupying the space between documentary...

Icons of Danish Modernity

Georg Brandes and Asta Nielsen

By Julie K. Allen

Julie Allen utilizes the lives and friendship of the Danish literary critic George Brandes (1842-1927) and the silent film star Asta Nielsen (1881-1972) to explore questions of culture and national identity in early twentieth-century Denmark....

The Power of Song

Nonviolent National Culture in the Baltic Singing Revolution

By Guntis Smidchens

The Power of Song shows how the people of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania confronted a military superpower and achieved independence in the Baltic “Singing Revolution.” When attacked by Soviet soldiers in public displays of violent...