Reinventing Film Studies

(Paperback)

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This volume asks "where is film studies now". It once enjoyed intellectual prestige by exploiting powerful concepts drawn from psychoanalysis and poststructuralism in the service of textual criticism. In the process cinema was established as an autonomous art and a textual discipline. In modern times however, both the medium and intellectual terrain have changed. Films are more likely to be delivered to their consumers via video and television, as likely to be generated by computer graphics as celluloid. Film production intersects with the music, toy and computer games industries. Media and cultural studies have evolved, spreading a broader net than the old film studies, investigating the intertwining of economy, politics, social structures, cultural practices and identities with media institutions. In this book noted film scholars reflect from the perspective of their own area of expertise on the position of film studies in this changing environment. They examine key issues, assess the impact on the discipline of these developments, challenge recieved thinking, and reinvent film studies for the post-film era.

Reviews

In this rich collection, a large and varied group of prominent scholars covers the state of the field in Film Studies. The book presents the reader with a dynamic tissue of discussions, positions and proposals that are methodological, theoretical, historiographic, aesthetic, and political. This is the kind of constellation that originally energized the relatively young discipline of Film Studies, but even in its references to the history of film scholarship there is nothing nostalgic about Reinventing Film Studies. Its writers are some of the most innovative and influential figures in the field, and their accounts of the present are fundamentally aimed at mapping future directions. Their contributions are at once authoritative, rigorous and polemical. This volume will be a central reference point for anyone concerned with film and media scholarship for years to come. Professor Philip Rosen, Department of Modern Cultu At this moment of technological change, film studies is entering an exciting new phase in which it faces many challenges, not least the demand that it reinvent itself once again. This stimulating anthology will play an indispensable part in that process, and I have no hesitation in recommending it. Pam Cook, Professor of European Film and Media, Un I found the articles to be informative and theoretically sophisticated. I would highly recommend this anthology to both students and scholars interested in exploring theoretical frameworks which are 'really useful' in analysing film today. Film-Philosophy

Author Bio

Christine Gledhill is Professor in Film Studies, at the University of Sunderland, UK.