Timothy Shary interviews Alessandra Seggi about her book Youth and Suicide in American Cinema: Context, Causes, and Consequences (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), which examines approaches to this topic in a range of Hollywood and independent films. The thoughtful conversation discusses key recent examples, such as Archie’s Final Project (David Lee Miller, 2009), as well as more canonical films, such as Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955). The interview also touches on the important topic of how young people might approach these films in a salutary manner, to facilitate understanding of a difficult subject. Seggi and Shary demonstrate their wide-ranging knowledge of films about young people throughout the episode: Seggi’s follow-up work on youth and suicide in media has appeared in Visual Studies and In Media Res, and Shary’s many publications include Teen Movies: A Century of American Youth (Wallflower Press, 2023) and Generation Multiplex: The Image of Youth in American Cinema Since 1980 (University of Texas Press, 2014).
Geneveive Newman interviews Ben Rubin, Horror Collections Coordinator at the University of Pittsburgh's Archives and Special Collections about all things horror archives!
Daniel Smith-Rowsey interviews Timothy Shary about the second edition of his book Teen Movies: A Century of American Youth (Wallflower Press, 2023), which examines American cinema’s representation of teenagers. The thoughtful and expansive conversation covers a wide group of American teen films, ranging from Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) to CODA (Sian Heder, 2021). The lengthy time period allows the discussion to touch on changes in depictions of gender, sexuality, and race in the films during this period, as well as ways in which the film industry has (and has not) responded to changes in teens themselves. Both Shary and Smith-Rowsey show their extensive knowledge of American film throughout: Teen Movies complements Shary’s Generation Multiplex: The Image of Youth in American Cinema Since 1980 (University of Texas Press, 2014), and Smith-Rowsey has published Star Actors in the Hollywood Renaissance: Representing Rough Rebels (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and Blockbuster Performances: How Actors Contribute to Cinema’s Biggest Hits (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
Max Bledstein interviews Adam Lowenstein about his new book Horror Film and Otherness (Columbia University Press, 2022), which examines the treatment of social difference in horror. Through detailed and thoughtful close reading of films by directors including Tobe Hooper, George A. Romero, John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, Stephanie Rothman, Jennifer Kent, Marina de Van, and Jordan Peele, Lowenstein provides a compelling account of how horror depicts identity. Lowenstein and Bledstein discuss the genre’s complexities, some of its many critics, and its enduring (but evolving) significance.
Matt Boyd Smith interviews Julie Grossman and Will Scheibel about their new edited volume Penny Dreadful and Adaptation: Reanimating and Transforming the Monster (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), which explores the titular Showtime series (2014-16) and its spinoff, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels (2020). The rich and wide-ranging discussion touches on issues related to adaptation, gender, and the implications of the mosaic of references in both the original series and the spinoff (including Victorian literature, Universal horror films, and film noir). Grossman and Scheibel discuss the fascinating contributions made by their impressive array of contributors, and both demonstrate their own expertise throughout: Grossman previously published a monograph on adaptation, Literature, Film, and Their Hideous Progeny: Adaptation and ElasTEXTity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), and Grossman and Scheibel collaborated on Twin Peaks (Wayne State University Press, 2020), a TV Milestones volume exploring David Lynch's legendary series and its numerous paratexts. The conversation is a tie-in to the forthcoming New Review of Film and Television Studies special dossier "Women’s Authorship and Adaptation in Contemporary Television," guest edited by Sarah Louise Smyth (University of Essex) and Stefania Marghitu (Pitzer College), which will appear in issue 22.1 (2024).
Maggie Hennefeld interviews Diana W. Anselmo about her new book, A Queer Way of Feeling: Girl Fans and Personal Archives of Early Hollywood (University of California Press, 2023), which gathers an unexplored archive of fan-made scrapbooks, letters, diaries, and photographs to explore how girls coming of age in the United States in the 1910s used cinema to forge a foundational language of female nonconformity, intimacy, and kinship. Anselmo and Hennefeld discuss queer fandom, archival research, feminist historiography, movie love, and the precarious social conditions in which passionate audiences find their voices through unlikely means.
From the Why Theory podcast: "On this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss the bottle episode form of television in the context of Ryan’s recent article, 'The Limitation of the Bottle Episode: Hegel and Community.' After establishing the historical and economic conditions that led to the initial development of the bottle episode, Ryan and Todd articulate how the form mobilizes temporal and spatial constraints as a way of stoking existential conflict within and between characters. Ultimately they show how the constraints that cohere the bottle episode move its narrative toward the space of dialectical contradiction."
This episode features Drs. Maria Flood and Victor Evans in conversation about Barry Jenkins' landmark film Moonlight (2016). Read more about Dr. Flood's book and order here: https://www.routledge.com/Moonlight-Screening-Black-Queer-Youth/Flood/p/book/9780367151393
Read Carl Sweeney's review of Stacey Abbot's book: https://nrftsjournal.org/kathryn-bigelow-a-visionary-director/
Read our 2021 special issue KATHRYN BIGELOW: A VISIONARY DIRECTOR edited by Frances Pheasant-Kelly, including Sweeney's article on Bigelow and auteur theory: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rfts20/19/3