Film and Television Analysis: An Introduction to Methods, Theories, and Approaches

This fully revised second edition textbook is especially designed to introduce undergraduate students to the most important qualitative methodologies used to study film and television.

The methodologies covered in Film and Television Analysis include: ideological analysis, auteur theory, genre theory, semiotics and structuralism, psychoanalysis and apparatus theory, feminism, postmodernism, cultural studies (including reception and audience studies), and contemporary approaches to race, nation, gender, and sexuality. With each chapter focusing on a distinct methodology, students are introduced to the historical developments of each approach, along with its vocabulary, significant scholars, key concepts, and case studies.

Features of the second edition include:

• new and updated case studies to accompany each chapter
• over 130 color images throughout
• questions for discussion at the end of each chapter
• suggestions for further reading
• a glossary of key terms

Written in a reader-friendly manner, Film and Television Analysis is a vital textbook for students encountering these concepts for the first time.

Harry M. Benshoff is Professor and Chair of Media Arts at the University of North Texas. His books include Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film (1997), Queer Images: A History of Gay and Lesbian Film in America (2006), Dark Shadows (2011), and the edited volume A Companion to the Horror Film (2014). His co-authored textbook America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies is now in its third edition.

Caryn Murphy is the Oshkosh Northwestern Endowed Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, where she teaches in the Department of Radio-TV-Film. Her research on the politics of race and gender in media representations has appeared in Media History, the Journal of Screenwriting, the Journal of Popular Culture, the Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, and edited collections including From Networks to Netflix (2018, 2022).