The idea of a sci-fi ghetto that “Battlestar Galactica” tried to escape from suggests a fruitful way of analysing the show. Genres, especially those that are popular simultaneously in television and film, are defined and definable through a repertoire of elements: characters, plot, setting, iconography, and style. Since the focus of this cha…[Read more]

Taking “Heroes” (2006-10), the popular drama series about a group of ordinary human beings with superhuman abilities, as a case study allows us to expand on these ideas. This chapter aims at contributing to a stylistic analysis of the series without attempting to examine every major stylistic feature of the series in detail. Instead, the scope of…[Read more]

This essay focuses on moments that stress the significance of inhabitation (of living in a space and finding a place in it) and duration (of experiencing time and valuing it) in classical American sitcoms. “Sitcom” is short for situation comedy and it is usually defined as a type of series in which an established set of characters are involved in…[Read more]

This analysis of the HBO television series ‘Carnivàle’ focuses on its overarching style as well as on its abrupt ending after two seasons.

The inaugural issue of “Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies”. For our first issue, we solicited papers discussing Stanley’s autobiographical writings. To mirror types of conversations, we asked for both short and long (though we received mostly the latter).

Grounding Cavell’s work within the historical forces that shaped it is a curious task that each of the contributors to this issue is up to. From film, to opera, to philosophy, to American studies, to ordinary language, Cavell belongs in and amongst many historical threads, or, perhaps many historical threads are worth picking up when attempting t…[Read more]

The fourth issue of Conversations, which explores Cavell’s philosophic interest in literature, an oft-repeated and rehashed thematic prism and vantage point from which to address Cavell’s work. However, it is our feeling that, at times anyhow, Cavell’s interest in Wittgenstein and film dwarfs slightly his literary interests. We are const…[Read more]

The fourth issue of “Cinema” addresses the topic of philosophy of religion and its connections with cinematic art. Film and religion have been fruitful research topics taken in conjunction. Researchers in this specific field have focused on particular periods (like the censorship era in the USA), on representations of religious traditions and pra…[Read more]

The encounter in the 1960s and 70s between Marxism and film studies, as an institutionally recognised academic field, was a radically incomplete and perhaps even a rather superficial and unsatisfactory affair. The work of cross-fertilisation between Marxism and film and their critical sifting of concepts and perspectives had hardly begun when for…[Read more]

The split screen is a well-known multi-frame technique used in film, television, and video. This essay focuses on cases in which this denomination seems incorrect, but that are currently classified under the same heading. In these instances, images of usually distinct characteristics are arranged on screen. The aim is to explore and define this…[Read more]

Las películas de Maddin absorben al espectador inmediatamente al mismo tiempo que su complejidad resulta agotadora. Dejan una impresión perdurable de un mundo efímero y distanciado, extrañamente cercano al nuestro —como una sombra profunda de él—. Nuestro propósito es reflexionar sobre esta impresión, dando cuenta de cómo la obra del cineasta ca…[Read more]