Description
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.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Locating American Documentary: Politics, Infrastructure, Practice, by Joshua Glick and Patricia AufderheideSection I: Dynamics of Infrastructure Chapter 1: The Political Documentary Film Essay is Infrastructural, by Alexandra JuhaszChapter 2: The Political Economy of Documentary Archives, by Josh Shepperd and Laura GarbesChapter 3: Documentary Circuits: The Distribution of Documentary Film in the United States, by Nora StoneChapter 4: The Documentary Commons: A Critical Challenge to Cinema's Impact Frameworks, by Angela J. AguayoSection II: Public Policy, Public Media Chapter 5: Copyright, Self-Censorship, Fair Use, and Documentary Film, by Patricia AufderheideChapter 6: Regulating Documentary: Television, Conservative Activism, and the Expressive Power of Policy, by Allison PerlmanChapter 7: What Does Democracy Look Like? Documentary and the Demos in Public Television, by Laurie Ouellette Chapter 8: Government Documentary During the Cold War: The United States Information Agency's Global Outreach, by Hadi Gharabaghi and Bret Vukoder Section III: Movements for Equity and JusticeChapter 9: By, About and For: Contemporary Indigenous Documentary, by Colleen Thurston, Choctaw, and Erica Cusi WorthamChapter 10: Elizabeth Mitchell, Documentary, and the Invention of the Black Cinematic Atlantic, by Ellen C. ScottChapter 11: The Art of Advocacy: Mexican American Documentary, by Carlos Francisco ParraChapter 12: Absence and Presence in Post-Stonewall Queer Documentary: Queer Radicalness, Assimilation, and the Gray Space Between, by Ronald Gregg Chapter 13: From Observed Patient to Filmmaker: Disability and Documentary in the United States, by Linnéa HusseinChapter 14: Documentary as Ecocinema: Form, Ethics, and Environmental Justice, by Kristi McKimChapter 15: Racial Affect and Populist Epistemologies: Citizens United and Conservative Documentary, by Michael M. ReinhardSection IV: The Politics of Performance Chapter 16: Character Driven Documentary, by Chris CagleChapter 17: Deep Fake: Borat's Subsequent Return to America in a Post-Truth Era, by Leshu TorchinChapter 18: The Case for Abolishing True Crime, by Brett Story and Pooja Rangan Section V: Documentary Across MediaChapter 19: Documentary's Longue Durée (Elaborated): Beginnings, Formations, Genealogies, by Charles MusserChapter 20: Black Tourism: Home Movies as Resistance, by Elizabeth Patton Chapter 21: Reframing Asian American Documentary Media, by Denise Khor Chapter 22: Environments of Race and Place: The Urgencies and Enmeshments of Participatory Community Media, by Dale Hudson and Patricia R. ZimmermannSection VI: Technologies of Immersion and AugmentationChapter 23: Situating the Interactive and Immersive Documentary, by William UricchioChapter 24: XR and Documentary: Affinities and Resistance, by Julia Scott-StevensonChapter 25: Documentary and Wildlife, by Scott MacDonaldChapter 26: Another Way of Viewing: Documentary and the Digital Humanities, by Lauren Tilton Epilogue: Insights From Practitioners, by Patricia Aufderheide
