This volume addresses the growing obsolescence of traditional constructions of masculine identity in popular romantic comedies by proposing an approach that combines gender and genre theory to examine the ongoing radical reconstruction of gender roles in these films. Alberti creates a unified theory of gender role change in the movies that combines the insights of both poststructuralist gender and narrative genre theory, avoiding binary approaches to the study of gender representation. He establishes the current "crises" in both gender representation and genre development within romantic comedies as examples of experimentation and change towards narratives that feature more egalitarian and less essentialist constructions of gender.

This volume addresses the growing obsolescence of traditional constructions of masculine identity in popular romantic comedies by proposing an approach that combines gender and genre theory to examine the ongoing radical reconstruction of gender roles in these films. Alberti creates a unified theory of gender role change in the movies that combines the insights of both poststructuralist gender and narrative genre theory, avoiding binary approaches to the study of gender representation. He establishes the current "crises" in both gender representation and genre development within romantic comedies as examples of experimentation and change towards narratives that feature more egalitarian and less essentialist constructions of gender.

Screen Ages is a valuable guide for students exploring the complex and vibrant history of US cinema and showing how this film culture has grown, changed and developed.

Covering key periods from across American cinema history, John Alberti explores the social, technological and political forces that have shaped cinematic output and the varied impacts cinema of on US society.

Each chapter has a series of illuminating key features, including:

• Now Playing, focusing on films as cinematic events, from "The Birth of a Nation" to "Gone with the Wind" to "Titanic, "to place the reader in the social context of those viewing the films for the first time
• In Development, exploring changing genres, from the melodrama to the contemporary super hero movies,
• The Names Above and Below the Title, portraying the impact and legacy of central figures, including Florence Lawrence, Orson Welles and Wes Anderson
• Case studies, analyzing key elements of films in more depth
• Glossary terms featured throughout the text, to aid non-specialist students and expand the readers understanding of changing screen cultures.

Screen Ages" illustrates how the history of US cinema has always been and continues to be one of multiple screens, audiences, venues, and markets. It is an essential text for all those wanting to understand of power of American cinema throughout history and the challenges for its future.

The book is also supported by a companion website, featuring additional case studies, an interactive blog, a quiz bank for each chapter and an online chapter, Screen Ages Today that will be updated to discuss the latest developments in American cinema."

Screen Ages is a valuable guide for students exploring the complex and vibrant history of US cinema and showing how this film culture has grown, changed and developed.

Covering key periods from across American cinema history, John Alberti explores the social, technological and political forces that have shaped cinematic output and the varied impacts cinema of on US society.

Each chapter has a series of illuminating key features, including:

• Now Playing, focusing on films as cinematic events, from "The Birth of a Nation" to "Gone with the Wind" to "Titanic, "to place the reader in the social context of those viewing the films for the first time
• In Development, exploring changing genres, from the melodrama to the contemporary super hero movies,
• The Names Above and Below the Title, portraying the impact and legacy of central figures, including Florence Lawrence, Orson Welles and Wes Anderson
• Case studies, analyzing key elements of films in more depth
• Glossary terms featured throughout the text, to aid non-specialist students and expand the readers understanding of changing screen cultures.

Screen Ages" illustrates how the history of US cinema has always been and continues to be one of multiple screens, audiences, venues, and markets. It is an essential text for all those wanting to understand of power of American cinema throughout history and the challenges for its future.

The book is also supported by a companion website, featuring additional case studies, an interactive blog, a quiz bank for each chapter and an online chapter, Screen Ages Today that will be updated to discuss the latest developments in American cinema."

Transforming Harry: The Adaptation of Harry Potter in the Transmedia Age is an edited volume of eight essays that look at how the cinematic versions of the seven Harry Potter novels represent an unprecedented cultural event in the history of cinematic adaptation. The movie version of the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, premiered in 2001, in between publication of the fourth and fifth books of this global literary phenomenon. As a result, the production and reception of both novel and movie series became intertwined with one another, creating a fan base that accessed the series first through the books, first through the movies, and in various other combinations. John Alberti and P. Andrew Miller have gathered scholars to explore and examine the cultural, political, aesthetic, and pedagogical dimensions of this pop-culture phenomenon and how it has changed the reception of both the films and books. While the primary focus of the collection is an academic audience, it will appeal to a broad range of listeners. Within the academic community, Transforming Harry will be of interest to scholars and teachers in a number of disciplines, including film and media studies and English.

Although it lasted only four seasons and just forty-four episodes, The Killing attracted considerable critical notice and sparked an equally lively debate about its distinctive style and innovative approach to the television staple of the police procedural. A product of the turn toward revisionist "quality" television in the post-broadcast era, The Killing also stands as a pioneering example of the changing gender dynamics of early twenty-first-century television. Author John Alberti looks at how the show's focus shifts the police procedural away from the idea that solving the mystery of whodunit means resolving the crime, and toward dealing with the ongoing psychological aftermath of crime and violence on social and family relationships. This attention to what creator and producer Veena Sud describes as the "real cost" of murder defines The Killing as a milestone feminist revision of the crime thriller and helps explain why it has provoked such strong critical reactions and fan loyalty. Alberti examines the history of women detectives in the television police procedural, paying particular attention to how the cultural formation of the traditionally male noir detective has shaped that history. Through a careful comparison with the Danish original, Forbrydelsen, and a season-by-season overview of the series, Alberti argues that The Killing rewrites the masculine lone wolf detective - a self-styled social outsider who sees the entanglements of relationships as threats to his personal autonomy - of the classic noir. Instead, lead detective Sarah Linden, while wary of the complications of personal and social attachments, still recognises their psychological and ethical inescapability and necessity. In the final chapter, the author looks at how the show's move to ever-expanding niche markets and multi-viewing options, along with an increase in feminist reconstructions of various television genres, makes The Killing a perfect example of cult television that lends itself to binge-watching in the digital era. Television studies scholars and fans of police procedurals should own this insightful volume.

Since its first appearance as a series of cartoon vignettes in 1987 and its debut as a weekly program in 1990, The Simpsons has had multiple, even contradictory, media identities. Although the show has featured biting political and social satire, which often proves fatal to mass public acceptance, The Simpsons entered fully into the mainstream, consistently earning high ratings from audiences and critics alike. Leaving Springfield addresses the success of The Simpsons as a corporate-manufactured show that openly and self-reflexively parodies the very consumer capitalism it simultaneously promotes. By exploring such topics as the impact of the show's satire on its diverse viewing public and the position of The Simpsons in sitcom and television animation history, the commentators develop insights into the ways parody intermixes with mass media to critique postmodern society. In spite of the longevity and high cultural profile of the show, The Simpsons has so far attracted only scattered academic attention. Leaving Springfield will be of importance of both scholars of media and fans of the show interested in the function of satire in popular culture in general and television in particular.

In defiance of the alleged "death of romantic comedy," After "Happily Ever After": Romantic Comedy in the Post-Romantic Age edited by Maria San Filippo attests to rom-com's continuing vitality in new modes and forms that reimagine and rejuvenate the genre in ideologically, artistically, and commercially innovative ways. No longer the idyllic fairy tale, today's romantic comedies ponder the realities and complexities of intimacy, fortifying the genre's gift for imagining human connection through love and laughter. It has often been observed that the rom-com's "happily ever after" trope enables the genre to avoid addressing the challenges of coupled life. This volume's contributors confront how recent rom-coms contend with a "post-romantic age" of romantic disillusionment and seismically shifting emotional and relational bonds. Fifteen chapters contemplate the resurgence of the "radical romantic comedy" and uncoupling comedy, new approaches in genre hybridity and serial narrative, and how recent rom-coms deal with divisive topical issues and contemporary sexual mores from reproductive politics and marriage equality to hook-up culture and technology-enabled sex. Rom-coms remain underappreciated and underexamined-and still largely defined within Hollywood's parameters of culturally normative coupling and its persistent marginalization of racial and sexual minorities. Making the case for taking romantic comedy seriously, this volume employs critical perspectives drawn from feminist, queer, postcolonial, and race studies to critique the genre's homogeneity and social and sexual conservatism, recognizing innovative works inclusive of LGBTQ people, people of color, and the differently aged and abled. Encompassing a rich range of screen media from the last decade, After "Happily Ever After" celebrates works that disrupt and subvert rom-com fantasy and formula so as to open audience's eyes along with our hearts. This volume is intended for all readers with an interest in film, media, and gender studies.

In defiance of the alleged "death of romantic comedy," After "Happily Ever After": Romantic Comedy in the Post-Romantic Age edited by Maria San Filippo attests to rom-com's continuing vitality in new modes and forms that reimagine and rejuvenate the genre in ideologically, artistically, and commercially innovative ways. No longer the idyllic fairy tale, today's romantic comedies ponder the realities and complexities of intimacy, fortifying the genre's gift for imagining human connection through love and laughter. It has often been observed that the rom-com's "happily ever after" trope enables the genre to avoid addressing the challenges of coupled life. This volume's contributors confront how recent rom-coms contend with a "post-romantic age" of romantic disillusionment and seismically shifting emotional and relational bonds. Fifteen chapters contemplate the resurgence of the "radical romantic comedy" and uncoupling comedy, new approaches in genre hybridity and serial narrative, and how recent rom-coms deal with divisive topical issues and contemporary sexual mores from reproductive politics and marriage equality to hook-up culture and technology-enabled sex. Rom-coms remain underappreciated and underexamined-and still largely defined within Hollywood's parameters of culturally normative coupling and its persistent marginalization of racial and sexual minorities. Making the case for taking romantic comedy seriously, this volume employs critical perspectives drawn from feminist, queer, postcolonial, and race studies to critique the genre's homogeneity and social and sexual conservatism, recognizing innovative works inclusive of LGBTQ people, people of color, and the differently aged and abled. Encompassing a rich range of screen media from the last decade, After "Happily Ever After" celebrates works that disrupt and subvert rom-com fantasy and formula so as to open audience's eyes along with our hearts. This volume is intended for all readers with an interest in film, media, and gender studies.

Transforming Harry: The Adaptation of Harry Potter in the Transmedia Age is an edited volume of eight essays that look at how the cinematic versions of the seven Harry Potter novels represent an unprecedented cultural event in the history of cinematic adaptation. The movie version of the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, premiered in 2001, in between publication of the fourth and fifth books of this global literary phenomenon. As a result, the production and reception of both novel and movie series became intertwined with one another, creating a fan base that accessed the series first through the books, first through the movies, and in various other combinations. John Alberti and P. Andrew Miller have gathered scholars to explore and examine the cultural, political, aesthetic, and pedagogical dimensions of this pop-culture phenomenon and how it has changed the reception of both the films and books. While the primary focus of the collection is an academic audience, it will appeal to a broad range of listeners. Within the academic community, Transforming Harry will be of interest to scholars and teachers in a number of disciplines, including film and media studies and English.