An Introduction to Film Genres

A brisk, accessible, and informative introduction to film genres.

An Introduction to Film Genres, written by leading film scholars specifically for undergraduates who are new to the study of film, provides an introduction that helps students see thirteen film genres in a new light---to help them identify the themes, iconography, and distinctive stylistic traits of each genre.

Lester Friedman (Ph.D., Syracuse University) is Professor of Media and Society at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He is the author of Citizen Spielberg (University of Illinois Press), Fires Were Started (Wallflower Press), American Cinema of the 1970s (Rutgers University Press), and Cultural Sutures: Medicine and Media (Duke University Press), among other publications.

David Desser (Ph.D., University of Southern California) is Professor Emeritus of Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois. He is the author of The Samurai Films of Akira Kurosawa (UMI Research Press) and Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema (Indiana University Press); the co-author (with Lester Friedman) of American Jewish Filmmakers (U of Illinois Press); and the editor of Ozu’s Tokyo Story (Cambridge University Press).

Sarah Kozloff (Ph.D., Stanford University) is Professor of Film at Vassar College. She is the author of Invisible Storytellers: Voice-Over Narration in American Fiction Film (University of California Press), Overhearing Film Dialogue (University of California Press), and The Best Years of Our Lives (part of the British Film Institute’s “BFI Classics” series).

Martha Nochimson (Ph.D., CUNY) is an independent scholar and writer. She is the author of No End to Her: Soap Opera and the Female Subject (University of California Press), The Passion of David Lynch: Wild at Heart in Hollywood (University of Texas Press), Screen Couple Chemistry: The Power of 2 (University of Texas Press), Dying to Belong: Gangster Movies in Hollywood and Hong Kong (Wiley-Blackwell), World on Film: An Introduction (Wiley-Blackwell), and David Lynch Swerves: Uncertainty from Lost Highway to Inland Empire (University of Texas Press).

Stephen Prince (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) was Professor of Cinema at Virginia Tech University. He is the author of fifteen books, including The Warrior’s Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa (Princeton University Press), A New Pot of Gold: Hollywood Under the Electronic Rainbow, 1980-1989 (University of California Press), Screening Violence (Rutgers University Press), The Horror Film (Rutgers University Press), Screen Decades: 1980s (Rutgers University Press), Firestorm: American Film in the Age of Terrorism (Columbia University Press), and Movies and Meaning: An Introduction to Film (Pearson).