Martial Culture, Silver Screen analyzes war movies, one of the most popular genres in American cinema, for what they reveal about the narratives and ideologies that shape U.S. national identity. Edited by Matthew Christopher Hulbert and Matthew E. Stanley, this volume explores the extent to which the motion picture industry, particularly Hollywood, has played an outsized role in the construction and evolution of American self-definition. Moving chronologically, eleven essays highlight cinematic versions of military and cultural conflicts spanning from the American Revolution to the War on Terror. Each focuses on a selection of films about a specific war or historical period, often foregrounding recent productions that remain understudied in the critical literature on cinema, history, and cultural memory. Scrutinizing cinema through the lens of nationalism and its "invention of tradition", Martial Culture, Silver Screen considers how movies possess the power to frame ideologies, provide social coherence, betray collective neuroses and fears, construct narratives of victimhood or heroism, forge communities of remembrance, and cement tradition and convention. Hollywood war films routinely present broad, identifiable narratives such as that of the rugged pioneer or the "good war" through which filmmakers invent representations of the past, establishing narratives that advance discrete social and political functions in the present. As a result, cinematic versions of wartime conflicts condition and reinforce popular understandings of American national character as it relates to violence, individualism, democracy, militarism, capitalism, masculinity, race, class, and empire. Approaching war movies as identity-forging apparatuses and tools of social power, Martial Culture, Silver Screen lays bare how cinematic versions of warfare have helped define for audiences what it means to be American.

This volume considers the different implications of the rise of streaming services and their particular acceleration during the COVID-19 pandemic. Exploring the significant disruption caused to the entertainment industries by the rise of these streaming services, a team of international scholars examine changes to labor issues and compensation, which were central to the conflict between the Writers Guild of America members and their agents, the broadening divide between networks and affiliates, the significant consolidation of the media industry resulting from Disney’s acquisition of Fox ahead of the launch of Disney+, and the variety of business models behind these services that defy the traditional advertising models and standard revenue streams. This thorough and multifaceted look at this rapidly growing section of the entertainment industry will be of interest to academics and students working in film and TV studies, media industry studies, digital media studies, business, and communication studies.

Reasserting the Disney Brand in the Streaming Era investigates the evolution of the Disney brand at a pivotal moment – the move from content creation to acquisition and streaming – and how the company reasserted its brand in a changing marketplace. Exploring how Disney’s acquisition of Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Fox positioned the company to launch the Disney+ streaming service, the chapters look at the history of those acquisitions, and the deployment of the content, brands, and intellectual property from those acquisitions, through an analysis of the original content that appeared on Disney+. Offering a focused investigation of how the content offered from these various media brands was adapted for Disney+ so that it reflects the Disney brand, the authors illustrate through close textual analysis how this content reflects elements of the "Classic Disney Style." The analysis positions these texts in relation to their industrial contexts, while also identifying important touchstone texts (both television and film) in Disney's catalog. This comprehensive and thoughtful analysis will interest upper-level students and scholars of media studies, political economy, Disney studies, media industries and new technology.

How did Americans imagine the Civil War before it happened? The most anticipated event of the nineteenth century appeared in novels, prophecies, dreams, diaries, speeches, and newspapers decades before the first shots at Fort Sumter. People forecasted a frontier filibuster, an economic clash between free and slave labor, a race war, a revolution, a war for liberation, and Armageddon. Reading their premonitions reveals how several factors, including race, religion, age, gender, region, and class shaped what people thought about the future and how they imagined it. Some Americans pictured the future as an open, contested era that they progressed toward and molded with their thoughts and actions. Others saw the future as a closed, predetermined world that approached them and sealed their fate. When the war began, these opposing temporalities informed how Americans grasped and waged the conflict. In this creative history, Jason Phillips explains how the expectations of a host of characters-generals, politicians, radicals, citizens, and slaves-affected how people understood the unfolding drama and acted when the future became present. He reconsiders the war's origins without looking at sources using hindsight, that is, without considering what caused the cataclysm and whether it was inevitable. As a result, Phillips dispels a popular myth that all Americans thought the Civil War would be short and glorious at the outset, a ninety-day affair full of fun and adventure. Much more than rational power games played by elites, the war was shaped by uncertainties and emotions and darkened horizons that changed over time. Instead Looming Civil War highlights how individuals approached an ominous future with feelings, thoughts, and perspectives different from our sensibilities and unconnected to our view of their world. Civil War Americans had their own prospects to ponder and forge as they discovered who they were and where life would lead them. The Civil War changed more than America's future; it transformed how Americans imagined the future-and how Americans have thought about the future ever since.

Animals mattered in the Civil War. Horses and mules powered the Union and Confederate armies, providing mobility for wagons, pulling artillery pieces, and serving as fighting platforms for cavalrymen. Drafted to support the war effort, horses often died or suffered terrible wounds on the battlefield. Raging diseases also swept through army herds and killed tens of thousands of other equines. In addition to weaponized animals such as horses, pets of all kinds accompanied nearly every regiment during the war. Dogs commonly served as unit mascots and were also used in combat against the enemy. Living and fighting in the natural environment, soldiers often encountered a variety of wild animals. They were pestered by many types of insects, marveled at exotic fish while being transported along the coasts, and took shots at alligators in the swamps along the lower Mississippi River basin. Animal Histories of the Civil War Era charts a path to understanding how the animal world became deeply involved in the most divisive moment in American history. In addition to discussions on the dominant role of horses in the war, one essay describes the use of camels by individuals attempting to spread slavery in the American Southwest in the antebellum period. Another explores how smaller wildlife, including bees and other insects, affected soldiers and were in turn affected by them. One piece focuses on the congressional debate surrounding the creation of a national zoo, while another tells the story of how the famous show horse Beautiful Jim Key and his owner, a former slave, exposed sectional and racial fault lines after the war. Other topics include canines, hogs, vegetarianism, and animals as veterans in post-Civil War America. The contributors to this volume-scholars of animal history and Civil War historians-argue for an animal-centered narrative to complement the human-centered accounts of the war. Animal Histories of the Civil War Era reveals that warfare had a poignant effect on animals. It also argues that animals played a vital role as participants in the most consequential conflict in American history. It is time to recognize and appreciate the animal experience of the Civil War period.

Martial Culture, Silver Screen analyzes war movies, one of the most popular genres in American cinema, for what they reveal about the narratives and ideologies that shape U.S. national identity. Edited by Matthew Christopher Hulbert and Matthew E. Stanley, this volume explores the extent to which the motion picture industry, particularly Hollywood, has played an outsized role in the construction and evolution of American self-definition. Moving chronologically, eleven essays highlight cinematic versions of military and cultural conflicts spanning from the American Revolution to the War on Terror. Each focuses on a selection of films about a specific war or historical period, often foregrounding recent productions that remain understudied in the critical literature on cinema, history, and cultural memory. Scrutinizing cinema through the lens of nationalism and its "invention of tradition", Martial Culture, Silver Screen considers how movies possess the power to frame ideologies, provide social coherence, betray collective neuroses and fears, construct narratives of victimhood or heroism, forge communities of remembrance, and cement tradition and convention. Hollywood war films routinely present broad, identifiable narratives such as that of the rugged pioneer or the "good war" through which filmmakers invent representations of the past, establishing narratives that advance discrete social and political functions in the present. As a result, cinematic versions of wartime conflicts condition and reinforce popular understandings of American national character as it relates to violence, individualism, democracy, militarism, capitalism, masculinity, race, class, and empire. Approaching war movies as identity-forging apparatuses and tools of social power, Martial Culture, Silver Screen lays bare how cinematic versions of warfare have helped define for audiences what it means to be American.

Not every ghost is dead. For Gregor Lepov, quarantine was never more agonizing than the day his ex-wife walked into his office. With a new husband at her side and a plea for help on her lips, the former Gloria Lepov hires Gregor to hunt down a stolen artifact on a trail littered with the dead. Haunted by her betrayals of the past, he determines to solve her case then throw her off his world before she ruins him a second time. Lilly Stewart has mysteriously chosen to give up her lucrative antiquities business to stay with Lepov in the Lazaretto. Bedeviled by the arrival of his ex-wife, she will perform her own exorcism of the dead husband she betrayed. Homicide Detective Ed MacNally, heading home after a typical day on the job, steps into a bar for a drink and watches two gangsters rough up a bartender. In the time it takes to stand to his feet, he is forced into a gunfight that leaves both gangsters dead. But his fight has just begun. Bent on avenging the death of his brother, one of the most prominent criminals in the Euxine system sets out to make MacNally pay with his life. Abandoned by his fellow detectives, the aging detective's only option is to run. But in quarantine, souls can never hide from their ghosts, their regrets, or the consequences of their worst and best intentions. And when they stop running and turn to face them, Gregor and his friends will pay the cost of betrayal with sorrow, violence and vengeance in a war waged by the gangsters, heroes, angels and traitors who inhabit a unique and dreadful little hell called the Lazaretto.

Eight passengers embark on The Jenny, a luxury yacht designed to revive the golden age of travel. Unfortunately, they can't sail twenty-four hours before being overtaken by a U-boat loaded with pirates. As if piracy weren't bad enough, the passengers and crew must face a threat even more terrifying than murder and mayhem: jury duty Dare a man trust his life to a jury of fools? Action, mystery, courtroom drama, and comedy collide on this ridiculous trip as the pirate Captain, Robert Montane, seeks his redemption on a madcap adventure that will bring him face to face with a society that has no clue how to recognize its own mistakes or what to do with them, even if it could.

If Jason and Jennifer Reeser were going to indulge their life-long fantasy of visiting Paris, they weren't going to play by the rules; no hotels, no guided tours, and none of those four-day-and-three-night packages. They would live in the City of Light as if they belonged. Setting aside two weeks in April, they ignored the experts and set out to find a Room With Paris View. "When you first encounter a city or a woman or a good book, you learn more about them, and fall in love with them the more you discover, but you will never quite match that moment when you first encountered them, knowing you had found something extraordinary and realizing how exciting it would be to explore the city or hold the woman in your arms or read the book to its very last page." -excerpt from Room With Paris View

As he carves a new life on the quarantine moon first revealed in "The Lazaretto," Gregor Lepov is hired to solve the perplexing disappearances of its citizens into a mysterious basement apartment. Detective Ed MacNally of Lazaretto Homicide is busy training his new partner, Menya Russell, with whom he is investigating the murder of a man whose body was recently uncovered after thirty years. Thieves, corpses, ladies and liars lure Lepov and MacNally into the Lazaretto's disturbing past. Has the killer that was active thirty years ago begun killing again? And after Lepov is nearly killed by a woman who looks too much like Lilly Stewart, he must decide who he can really trust in a city that shuns faith and embraces fear.

Ghosts, devils, grave-robbers, killers, lovers, pirates, and dead Rock-and-Rollers. These are only some of the inhabitants of Jason Phillip Reeser's short story collection Cities of the Dead. Each of these thirteen stories is set in one of the many above-ground cemeteries in New Orleans where the dead refuse to be buried. Not every story has a ghost, but every story is haunted by the inevitable ghosts that lurk in the shadows terrorizing our darkest corners: regret, guilt, fear, obsession, despair, failure, and loneliness.

The Lazaretto: A central quarantine system built in response to the rampant interplanetary epidemics that once ravaged the colony worlds of the Euxine System. Its simple design is centered on one premise: survive the forty-day quarantine without contracting an infectious disease. If you are lucky, you will be free to leave the quarantine moon, otherwise, you will not be allowed to leave the Lazaretto. Ever. Gregor Lepov arrives to discover just how paranoid and dangerous such a world can be. Hired to find a woman's missing son, he must carefully pick his way through a depressing healthcare system populated with dubious gov-ernment bureaucrats and overzealous cops even as it becomes evident that there is a violent killer loose in the city.

Well into the final months of the Civil War, countless Confederate soldiers earnestly believed that victory lay just around the corner. How could this be? Jason Phillips reveals the deeply ingrained attitudes that shaped the reality of these diehards not only during the war but in the subsequent era, when the myth of the Lost Cause was born.

Much is known about what Confederate soldiers fought for; far less is understood about why they fought on despite long odds and terrible costs. Drawing on soldiers' letters and diary entries from 1863 to 1865, "Diehard Rebels" explains how religious dogma and perceptions of Union barbarity and ineptitude affirmed in many soldiers a view of an indomitable South. Within the soldiers' closely circumscribed world, other elements reinforced convictions that the South was holding its own against great but surmountable odds. Close comradeship and disorienting combat conditions were factors, says Phillips, as well as conclusions drawn from images and experiences contradicting the larger reality, such as battlefields littered with enemy corpses and parade-ground spectacles of Confederate military splendor.

Troops also tended to perceive the course of the war in far-off theaters, the North, and overseas in positive ways. In addition, diehards were both consumers and conduits of rumors, misinformation, and propaganda that allowed them to envision a war that was rosier than the truth but still believable. Instead of crippling diehards after defeat, old notions of southern superiority helped them uphold southern honor. The central elements of Confederate invincibility fueled white southern defiance after surrender and evolved into the Lost Cause.