The Oxford Handbook of Film and Media Studies

by Robert P. Kolker (Editor)

The Oxford Handbooks are a major new cross-disciplinary initiative from Oxford University Press. Each volume offers a state-of-the-art survey of current thinking and research. Specially commissioned, original essays from leading international figures give critical examination to the progress and direction of debates in vital areas of scholarship. Oxford Handbooks provide scholars and graduate students with a valuable new tool for understanding a wide range of scholarly approaches toward subjects in the humanities and social sciences.

The Oxford Handbook of Film and Media Studiesi is a major new reference work that provides the best single-volume source of original scholarship on the intersection of film and media studies available. Comprised of twenty chapters by leading scholars and industry professionals, this expansive collection yields unique, fresh perspectives on a vast array of topics across these two vibrant fields.

Covering film and media in the U.S., Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East, this wide-ranging compendium surveys such topics as the changing concept of "realism" in film, the European political documentary, genre theory, and more. Also exploring recent developments in media studies, with special attention to new media, the Handbook features chapters that thoroughly examine topics as diverse as copyright, globalization, television programming, video game genres, the ideologies of media, and movie-going in India. Comprehensive, current, and in-depth-- The Oxford Handbook of Film and Media Studies combines cutting-edge scholarship on cinema and media in their many forms to present an authoritative assessment of developments in the U.S. and abroad.

640 pages, Hardcover

First published September 8, 2008

About the author

Robert Phillip Kolker, Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland, taught cinema studies for almost 50 years. He is author of A Cinema of Loneliness, The Extraordinary Image: Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and the Reimagining of Cinema, and editor of 2001: A Space Odyssey: New Essays and The Oxford Handbook of Film and Media Studies.

Reviews

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robert Kolker is my favorite film scholar but this massive "handbook" is not one of his best efforts. Numerous superior anthologies come to mind, such as Bill Nicholl's Movies and Methods," Barry Keith Grant's "Film Genre Reader," Church and Hill's "Oxford Guide to Film Studies" (which Kolker contributed to), "Contemporary Hollywood Cinema," "The End of Cinema as We Know It," and the out-of-print "Seeing Through Movies."

Kolker has edited two previous anthologies, one on "Psycho" and one on "2001: A Space Odyssey." The overall quality and interest of the essays in the current volume is decidedly lower. There are few film studies superstars on the roster--perhaps Kolker was providing an opportunity for new scholars to stretch their legs.

One interminable essay on European documentary traditions reads like typically bad undergrad writing. How this one slipped by is a mystery. There are two good essays on Asian cinema, but no one really knocks the ball out of the park. This "Guide" is uneven, overlong, and you couldn't assign this as an introductory text because the selection of topics is all over the place.

Perhaps Kolker was preoccupied with two other books he has in the works, a "Media Studies" text (due out soon) and "The Extraordinary Image," a study of postwar American cinema that has been called a "prequel" to "A Cinema of Loneliness." I look forward to this book very much.