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This volume—the first ever devoted to director Doris Wishman—covers her vast filmography, and is inclusive of her less discussed later films, hardcore films, and nudist films. By situating Wishman within larger contexts and movements in film history including women’s filmmaking, avant- garde and experimental cinema, and genre film, the volume considers the cultural, historical, and industrial significance of Wishman. Special focus is paid to gender studies, genre studies, film narrative, feminist history, queer history, and adult film history.

Since its release at the mid-point of the 1980s American horror boom, Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator (1985) has endured as one of the most beloved cult horror films of that era. Greeted by enthusiastic early reviews, Re-Animator has maintained a spot at the periphery of the classic horror film canon. While it has not entirely gone without critical attention, Re-Animator has often been overshadowed in horror studies by more familiar titles from the period. This book, which represents the first book-length study of the film, repositions Re-Animator as one of the more significant American horror films of its era. For Falvey, Re-Animator epitomises various developments that were taking place within the context of 1980s American horror. He uses Re-Animator to explore the rise and fall of Charles Band's Empire Pictures, a prolific if short-lived studio specialising in genre B-movies, the revival of the mad science sub-genre, the emergent popularity of both gore aesthetics and horror-comedies, as well as a new appetite for the works of H.P. Lovecraft in adaptation. This book tracks the film's various legacies, observing not only how Re-Animator's success gave rise to a new Lovecraftian cycle initiated by Gordon’s success here, but also how its cult status has continued to grow, marked by sequels, spin-offs, parodies and re-releases. As such, this book is both about Re-Animator itself and about the various contexts that birthed it and continue to reflect its influence.

Dumplings stuffed with diabolical fillings. Sword-wielding zombies. Hopping cadavers. Big-head babies. For decades, Hong Kong cinema has served up images of horror quite unlike those found in other parts of the world. In seminal films such as A Chinese Ghost Story, Rouge, The Eye, Dumplings, and Rigor Mortis, the region’s filmmakers have pushed the boundaries of genre, cinematic style, and bad taste. But what makes Hong Kong horror cinema so utterly unique? How has this cult tradition developed over time? Why does it hold such fascination for “serious” cinephiles and cult fans alike? And how have Hong Kong horror movies shaped the genre internationally? This book provides answers to such questions, celebrating the classics of the genre while introducing readers to lesser known films. Hong Kong Horror Cinema is the first book about this delirious and captivating cinematic tradition.

Until recently, there was a lack of scholarly attention to the power of hearing cinema as well as seeing it. This book breaks new ground by redirecting the arguments of foundational texts within film theory to sound tracks. It includes sustained analyses of particular films according to a wide range of theoretical approaches: feminism, genre studies, postcolonialism, psychoanalysis, and queer theory. Along with a wide range of American films (from Rebecca (1940) to Gravity (2013)), it also analyzes the sound tracks of independent Australasian films: examples include Heavenly Creatures (1994), a New Zealand film that uses music to empower its queer female protagonists; and Ten Canoes (2006), the first Australian feature entirely in Aboriginal languages. Thus, the book not only calls new attention to the significance of sound tracks: it focuses on the sonic power of characters representing those whose voices have all too often been drowned out. Dominant studies of film music tend to be written for those who are already musically trained. Similarly, studies of film sound tend to be jargon-heavy. By contrast, this book is both rigorous and accessible to all scholars with a basic grasp of cinematic and musical structures. Moreover, the book brings together film studies, musicology, history, politics, and culture. Therefore, the book will resonate for scholars across the liberal arts, and for anyone interested in challenging the so-called “hegemony of the visual.”

Haneke’s films are sonically charged experiences of disturbance, desperation, grief, and many forms of violence. They are unsoftened by music, punctuated by accosting noises, shaped by painful silences, and defined by aggressive dialogue. Haneke is among the most celebrated of living auteurs: he is two-time receipt of the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival (for The White Ribbon [2009] and Amour [2012]), and Academy Award winner of Best Foreign Language Film (for Amour), among numerous other awards. The radical confrontationality of his cinema makes him a most controversial, as well as revered, subject. Hearing Haneke is the first book-length study of the sound tracks that define his living legacy as an aural auteur. Hearing Haneke provides close sonic analyses of The Seventh Continent, Funny Games Code Unknown, The Piano Teacher, Caché, The White Ribbon, and Amour. The book includes several sustained theoretical approaches to film sound: including postcolonialism, feminism, genre studies, psychoanalysis, adaptation studies, and auteur theory. From these various theoretical angles, Hearing Haneke shows that the director consistently uses all aural elements (sound effects, dialogue, silences, and music) to inspire our humane understanding. He expresses faith in us to hear the pain of his characters’ worlds most actively, and hence our own more clearly. This has profound social and personal significance: for if we can hear everything better, this entails a new awareness of the “noise” we make in the world at large. Hearing Haneke will resonate for anyone interested in the power of art to inspire progressive change.

Sondheim in Our Time and His offers a wide-ranging historical investigation of the landmark works and extraordinary career of Stephen Sondheim, a career that has spanned much of the history of American musical theater. Each contributing author uncovers the aspects of biography, collaborative process, and contemporary context that impacted the creation and reception of Sondheim’s musicals. In addition, several authors explore in detail how Sondheim’s shows have been dramatically revised and adapted over time. Multiple chapters invite the reader to rethink Sondheim’s works from a distinctly contemporary critical perspective and to consider how these musicals are being reenvisioned today. Through chapters focused on individual musicals and others that explore a specific topic as manifested throughout his entire career; by digging deep into the archives and focusing intently on his scores; and from interviews with performers, directors, and bookwriters to close study of live and recorded productions, the authors have aimed to bring together Sondheim’s past with the present, thriving existence of his musicals.

This book is a literary history of international law in the age of Shakespeare, Milton, Grotius, and Hobbes. It tells the previously untold story of major English Renaissance writers who used literary genres like epic, tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, and history to help create modern international law. Whereas international law’s standard histories regularly omit literary figures and debates, Warren instead delights in the early modern contests over literary form that animated texts ranging from Hobbes’ Leviathan, Hugo Grotius’ De Jure Belli ac Pacis, and Alberico Gentili’s De Jure Belli to Sidney’s New Arcadia, Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, and Milton’s Paradise Lost. Over seven chapters and a conclusion, the book develops insights from scholarship in law and literature, genre studies, and the history of international political thought. The book charts a new approach to early modern literature that challenges literary scholars to think anew about the legal entailments of genres and to reconsider the intellectual origins of categories like public international law, private international law, international legal personality, and human rights. Suggesting that the field of law and literature has tacitly accepted specious but politically consequential assumptions about whether international law is real law, this book provides a fresh account of English Renaissance literature.