Casting aside the traditional conception of film as an outgrowth of photography, theater, and the novel, the essays in this volume reassess the relationship between the emergence of film and the broader culture of modernity. Contributors, leading scholars in film and cultural studies, link the popularity of cinema in the late nineteenth century to emerging cultural phenomena such as window shopping, mail-order catalogs, and wax museums.

CONTRIBUTORS:
Richard Abel, Leo Charney, Margaret Cohen, Jonathan Crary, Tom Gunning, Miriam Bratu Hansen, Alexandra Keller, Jeannene M. Pryzblyski, Erika Rappaport, Mark Sandberg, Vanessa R. Schwartz, Ben Singer, Marcus Verhagen

Leo Charney is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Iowa and Vanessa R. Schwartz is Assistant Professor of History at The American University in Washington, D.C.

"The effectively illustrated book contains exceptionally interesting essays. . . . As an interdisciplinary academic work, this will be of interest to students and scholars in film studies, art, and cultural history."—Library Journal

"Reassesses the relationship between the emergence of film and cinema and the broader culture of modernity. Cinema and modernity are presented as points of reflection and convergence. The thirteen essays, written by leading scholars in film and cultural studies, generate from the premise that cinema, as it developed in the late nineteenth century, became the fullest expression and combination of modernity's attributes."—Cab Abstracts

"This is one of the finest, freshest, and most suggestive anthologies I've come across in recent years."—Stuart Liebman, City University of New York Graduate Center