If you’ve been looking for scholarship on film, video, and media production, history, and aesthetics, this reading list is for you! The Journal of Film and Video (JFV) also includes research on education in these fields and the role of fiction and documentary work in society.
Edited by Cynthia Baron, JFV is a double-blind, peer-reviewed journal published four times a year. JFV is the official journal of the University of Film & Video Association.
Now, you can check out a free article from the Journal for an entire year. Here’s some recommended reading we thought you would enjoy:
“‘Why Don’t You Go Down to Wall Street and Get Some Real Crooks?’: Capitalism and Masculinity in GoodFellas, Casino, and The Wolf of Wall Street” by Ciara Moloney (Vol. 75, Iss. 2)
Free to access from July 1, 2024, to September 30, 2024
Across twenty-three years, Martin Scorsese directed three films—GoodFellas (1990), Casino (1995), and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)—that employ similar narrative structures and stylistic devices to explore variations on the same themes: class aspiration, greed, and masculinity in twentieth-century America. Each film is a period piece that uses historical crimes to create a time-displaced critique of the functioning of the contemporary economy. Each film also deals incisively with various forms of masculinity, particularly hypermasculinity, through the prisms of class, ethnicity, violence, and consumerism.
“According to the Narrator, It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: Styles of Narration-as-Advocation in True-Crime Documentary Series” by Max Dosser (Vol. 75, Iss. 2)
Free to access from October 1, 2024, to December 31, 2024
This article explores a specific aspect of true-crime series: the narrator. Dosser analyzes how the narrators of prominent true-crime documentary series deploy different strategies to cultivate credibility and convey narrative truth. Focusing on three critically-acclaimed true-crime series released in 2014–15 as case studies, Dosser first details a brief history of narrators and debates surrounding the narrative paradigm. He then proposes a taxonomy of different styles of narrators in true-crime documentary series to analyze how they construct credibility and narrative truth.
“The Disneyfication of Authorship: Above-the-Line Creative Labor in the Franchise Era” by Shawna Kidman (Vol. 73, Iss. 3)
Free to access from January 1, 2025, to March 31, 2025
Disney is a brand that prizes its intellectual property and has influenced major trends in Hollywood around how to do business in the franchise era. A key facet of this is Disney’s emphasis away from people and toward brands, advancing a discourse around authorship that Kidman refers to as “corporate auteurism.” This article analyzes this newest version of auteurism, examining the claims it makes publicly about the creative process.
“Introduction: What Is Queer Production Studies/Why Is Queer Production Studies?” by Alfred L. Martin, Jr. (Vol. 70, Iss. 3 – 4)
Free to access from April 1, 2025, to June 30, 2025
In this introduction to a special issue on the topic, Martin introduces the reader to the field of queer production studies. Queer production studies is as much concerned with the machinations of queer authorship as it is with the maneuvers of networks and their engagement with queerness and queer content. It also borrows from and extends feminist studies, engages with paratextuality, and deals with intersectionality.
Martin also introduces the articles in this special issue, which will be relevant to anyone interested in queer production studies.
Find Out More
- Read our blog post introducing editor Cynthia Baron.
- Individual Subscriptions can be made through the University of Illinois Press website.
- To recommend this title to your library, fill out this Library Request Form.
- Ready to see your work featured in Journal of Film and Video? Submit original scholarly work here.
- You may also enjoy: Music and the Moving Image.