The Disney Animation Renaissance by
Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida opened in Orlando at the dawn of the Disney Renaissance. As a member of the crew, Mary E. Lescher witnessed the small studio's rise and fall during a transformative era in company and movie history. Her in-depth interviews with fellow artists, administrators, and support personnel reveal the human dimension of a technological revolution: the dramatic shift from hand-drawn cel animation to the digital format that eclipsed it in less than a decade. She also traces the Florida Studio's parallel existence as a part of The Magic of Disney Animation, a living theme park attraction where Lescher and her colleagues worked in full view of Walt Disney World guests eager to experience the magic of the company's legendary animation process. A ground-level look at the entertainment giant, The Disney Animation Renaissance profiles the people and purpose behind a little-known studio during a historic era.
Encyclopedia of Television Miniseries, 1936-2020 by
In 1936, as television networks CBS, DuMont, and NBC experimented with new ways to provide entertainment, NBC deviated from the traditional method of single experimental programs to broadcast the first multi-part program, Love Nest, over a three-episode arc. This would come to be known as a miniseries. Although the term was not coined until 1954, several other such miniseries were broadcast, including Jack and the Beanstalk and Women in Wartime. In the mid-1960s the concept was developed into a genre that still exists. While the major broadcast networks pioneered the idea, it quickly became popular with cable and streaming services. This encyclopedic source contains a detailed history of 878 TV miniseries broadcast from 1936 to 2020, complete with casts, networks, credits, episode count and detailed plot information.
Free the Press by
Blending his experiences as a veteran reporter with analysis of the erosion of trust between the press and the government during the past 40 years, in Free the Press, renowned journalist Brian J. Karem gives readers a unique perspective on the challenges facing journalism while asking the question, "How did we get here?" And perhaps more importantly, "How do we fix it?". Since the Vietnam War, each and every president has overseen the withering of relations between the Executive Branch and the so-called Fourth Estate. Politicians are not solely to blame, however. Corporate media has us following the news of the day for clicks and views rather than pursuing long term stories of impact. Reporters have ceased to frame the narrative and failed to co-opt social media contributions until it was too late. Placed alongside a firsthand view of Karem's own experience as a reporter and manager in television, print, and the online media industry, where he witnessed buyouts and the end of locally owned and operated newspapers; a behind-the-scenes look at his work as a member of the White House Press Corps; and his advocacy to protect the journalistic pillar of anonymity, readers will come away with a deeper understanding of journalism, and what happened to it, at the national and local level. Karem concludes with a three-step plan to save the free press, as well as a comprehensive method to reporting for reporters to regain level footing and work toward repairing the damage done to one of the most important and sacred institutional relationships of our country.
Race and Digital Media by
Since the early days of the internet, there have been questions about how emerging technologies might one day liberate or further harm communities of color that already face structural inequalities of racism. As reliance on computing technologies increases, it is also important to address questions about racial bias in the design of digital platforms, labor inequalities in tech industries, and digital surveillance on Black and Brown communities. This textbook provides a comprehensive introduction to the theory and research on race and digital media. Focusing on the experiences of people of color in the United States, it explores the various ways that racism and white supremacy have shaped aspects of our digital world ‒ from the infrastructures and policies that support technological development, to algorithms and the collection of data, to the interfaces that shape engagement. Yet it also reveals how communities of color have deployed digital media in ways that expand the public sphere, contest the status quo, and give voice to creativity and joy. Race and Digital Media provides an essential resource for students of communication, media, technology, and society. It shows how to make sense of our ever-changing digital media landscape in a way that centers the continued impact of institutionalized racism and the potential for anti-racist futures.
Authorizing Superhero Comics by
Authorizing Superhero Comics examines the comic book superhero as a lasting phenomenon of US popular serial storytelling. Moving beyond linear- or creator-centered models of genre development, Daniel Stein identifies authorization conflicts that have driven the genre's evolution from the late 1930s to the present. These conflicts include paratextually mediated exchanges between officially authorized comic book producers and, alternatively, authorized fans that trouble the distinction between production and its reception; storyworld-building processes that subsume producers and fans into a collective rooted in a common style; parodies that ensure the genre's longevity by deflating criticism through self-reflexive humor; and collecting and archiving as forms of memory management that align the genre's past with the demands of the present. Taking seriously the serial agencies of the superhero comic book as a material artifact with a particular mediality, the study analyzes letter columns, editorial commentary, fanzines, encyclopedias, and other forms of comic book communication as critical frameworks for understanding the evolution of the genre--assessing rarely covered archival sources alongside some of the most treasured figures from the superhero's multi-decade history, from Batman and Spider-Man to Wonder Woman and Captain America.
Hello Human: a History of Visual Communication by
A kaleidoscopic journey tracing the methods and means of visual communication from the cave paintings of the earliest humans to the 'photograph' of a black hole in deep space. Since the beginning of our time as humans, we have never stopped making images and inventing channels for visual communication. From the cave dweller creating paintings on a wall at the dawn of civilized time to Instagram influencers today, technology may keep changing, but our need to reach one another, to move one another, to persuade, inform and entertain, has never been so vital. Hello Human traverses the entire landscape of our diverse, expansive and yet familiar means of visual communication. From the use of the human hand as a symbol, the power and use of gestures and the genesis of the printed book, to the movement between dimensions of reality and the digital realm, pixilation, optics and the understanding of light, Horsham takes his readers on a journey full of unexpected twists and turns, laying out a temporal narrative in the form of an intricate map of objects, events and people tied together by a common purpose - to communicate.
Blood on the Lens by
Through an identification of key case studies both mainstream and lesser known, Blood on the Lens: Trauma and Anxiety in American Found Footage Horror Cinemaargues that found footage horror cinema is uniquely able to confront a pervasive contemporary culture of anxiety and trauma. This book traces how and why the subgenre has continued to endure, even as we enter a post-cinematic landscape. Through three distinct sections, Blood on the Lensproposes key observations on the found footage horror subgenre. She questions how these films engage with national trauma, the common themes of this body of films and how they relate to wider anxieties. In addition, McMurdo investigates the effect various cultural movements have had on the aesthetics of found footage horror, how these films position their spectator and encourage an active viewing mode, and how the line between fiction and fact is blurred both paratextually and within the films themselves.
The Digital Republic by
From one of the leading intellectuals of the digital age, The Digital Republic is the definitive guide to the great political question of our time: how can freedom and democracy survive in a world of powerful digital technologies? A Financial Times "Book to Read" in 2022 Not long ago, the tech industry was widely admired, and the internet was regarded as a tonic for freedom and democracy. Not anymore. Every day, the headlines blaze with reports of racist algorithms, data leaks, and social media platforms festering with falsehood and hate. In The Digital Republic, acclaimed author Jamie Susskind argues that these problems are not the fault of a few bad apples at the top of the industry. They are the result of our failure to govern technology properly. The Digital Republic charts a new course. It offers a plan for the digital age: new legal standards, new public bodies and institutions, new duties on platforms, new rights and regulators, new codes of conduct for people in the tech industry. Inspired by the great political essays of the past, and steeped in the traditions of republican thought, it offers a vision of a different type of society: a digital republic in which human and technological flourishing go hand in hand.
The Writing Public by
Inspired by the reading and writing habits of citizens leading up to the French Revolution, The Writing Public is a compelling addition to the long-running debate about the link between the Enlightenment and the political struggle that followed. Elizabeth Andrews Bond scoured France's local newspapers spanning the two decades prior to the Revolution as well as its first three years, shining a light on the letters to the editor. A form of early social media, these letters constituted a lively and ongoing conversation among readers. Bond takes us beyond the glamorous salons of the intelligentsia into the everyday worlds of the craftsmen, clergy, farmers, and women who composed these letters. As a result, we get a fascinating glimpse into who participated in public discourse, what they most wanted to discuss, and how they shaped a climate of opinion. The Writing Public offers a novel examination of how French citizens used the information press to form norms of civic discourse and shape the experience of revolution. The result is a nuanced analysis of knowledge production during the Enlightenment. Thanks to generous funding from The Ohio State University Libraries and its participation in TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access (OA) volumes, available on the Cornell University Press website and other Open Access repositories.
