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. Read more about Horror Film and Otherness on the Columbia University Press website. Use the discount code CUP20 at checkout for a 20% discount.

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