Do Jane Austen novels truly celebrate—or undermine—romance and happy endings?
How did Jane Austen become a cultural icon for fairy-tale endings when her own books end in ways that are rushed, ironic, and reluctant to satisfy readers thirst for romance? In Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness, Austen ......
There are way more than 100 Great Rock Albums, and placing them in some kind of order is incredibly difficult. Music is not a competition and there are no hard and fast criteria by which to judge the greatness of an album. All you can do is measure popularity, the artistic currency a record currently has with critics or the public. So what, then, ......
Clint Eastwood, Race, and the Cinema of the American West
Tackling the rise of neoracism and the domestic apparatus of surveillance, control, and erasure, Hold It Real Still offers an astonishing revision of what audiences and critics thought they understood about a uniquely American genre of film.
Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery was one of the most prolific and popular actresses of the twentieth century. In her more than five hundred appearances on television, film and the stage, Elizabeth Montgomery’s talent, charisma, and personalityhave charmed millions for decades.
This delightful new book delineates, dissects, and ......
A unique exploration of how mental illness is portrayed in classic and contemporary films. The study of classic and contemporary films can provide a powerful avenue to understand the experience of mental illness. In Madness at the Movies, James Charney, MD, a practicing psychiatrist and long-time cinephile, examines films that delve deeply into ......
Musical Theater and Belief at the Heart of America
The local and regional shows staged throughout America use musical theater's inherent power of deception to cultivate worldviews opposed to mainstream ideas. Jake Johnson reveals how musical theater between the coasts inhabits the middle spaces between professional and amateur, urban and rural, fact and fiction, fantasy and reality, and truth and ......
The making of the hit show Priscilla Queen of the Desert
After an eight year absence from big musical theatre, Jeremy Stanford suddenly finds himself cast in a leading role of one of the most expensive and eagerly anticipated Australian musicals ever; Priscilla Queen of the Desert - The Musical. Involved from the outset, starting with the workshop of the first script, he navigates the auditions, the ......
During the dramatic economic and social transformation of late twentieth-century Indonesia, theatre performances in Central Java featured a familiar cast of rulers, nobles, clown servants and ordinary people. However, these presentations were not a repetition of age-old cultural 'traditions'. Instead, by stretching the framework of Javanese ......
One Tough Dame: The Life and Career of Diana Rigg offers a sweeping portrait of the revered performer's life and career. Deemed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1994, Diana Rigg (1938-2020) initially found fame as super sleuth Mrs. Emma Peel in the 1960s BBC/ABC-TV espionage series, The Avengers. A classically trained and ......
