The Oxford Handbook of American Film History

In a series of newly commissioned chapters, The Oxford Handbook of American Film History offers a new and fully compelling discussion of American film as marked by significant moments of industrial and artistic change. Many of the chapters are built upon primary sourced research, while others detail aspects of form and style. Together, the chapters in this book show a history shaped by multiple theses and voices and interests.

The Oxford Handbook of American Film History offers a series of newly-commissioned chapters on the current intellectual and topical diversity of the study of American film history. It provides a thorough look at the complex history of American cinema, and showcases a variety of historiographic practices and methods. Within each of the five chronological sections, readers will find discourse on technology, reception, exemplary films and filmmakers, the culture of celebrity, and industry policy, procedure, and regulation -- on political economy, textual representation (form, style, diversity), scientific/technological innovation, and the cultural (and subcultural) resonance of movies with their time and place. The Oxford Handbook of American Film explores the delicate and imperfect balance between art and commerce, between entertainment and commercial enterprise. Approaching the history of American film from a dialectical perspective that allows for a close look at not only the important films and filmmakers, but also the complex and fascinating business conducted behind the scenes. Movies are complicated products of a complicated industry. Consequently, the history of film defies a simple formula, a unilateral methodology. It is a history shaped by multiple theses and voices and interests.