The Oxford Handbook of American Documentary

The Oxford Handbook of American Documentary offers a valuable resource for students and scholars interested in documentary produced within, or connected to, the United States. The Handbook provides an understanding of how documentary has shifted throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and the ways in which past trends and movements have shaped our current environment of political polarization and an increasingly fractured media landscape.

The Oxford Handbook of American Documentary offers new approaches to the study of documentary produced within, or connected to, the United States. Leading scholars of nonfiction and emerging voices in the field examine documentary as a dynamic cultural form that draws on wide-ranging technologies, coheres around different representational modes, and is used for a variety of artistic, political, and entertainment purposes. A pressing concern of many of this volume''s authors - like many of the filmmakers they write about - is documentary''s ability to not just reach viewers, but to actively engage them in building a more equitable and just world. This volume''s twenty-six essays place the act of documentary making within a broader historical context, including macro-level analysis of how policy initiatives or economic shifts impact filmmakers as well as granular attention to how participants of a social movement use film to galvanize support for a cause. Additionally, The Oxford Handbook of American Documentary addresses the ways in which the stylistic tropes and rhetorical conventions of documentary are used to manipulate for political power or profit.