Check it Out!: Decline and Reimagination in Cinematic New York
Congratulations to co-chair Cortland Rankin
on Routledge publishing his first monograph!
Decline and Reimagination in Cinematic New York
Check out the link:
https://www.routledge.com/Decline-and-Reimagination-in-Cinematic-New-York/Rankin/p/book/9781032246413
Book Summary:
Decline and Reimagination in Cinematic New York examines the cinematic representation of New York from the mid-1960s through the mid-1980s, placing the dominant discourse of urban decline in dialogue with marginal perspectives that reimagine the city along alternative paths as a resilient, adaptive, and endlessly inspiring place.
Drawing on mainstream, independent, documentary, and experimental films, the book offers a multifaceted account of the power of film to imagine the city’s decline and reimagine its potential. The book analyzes how filmmakers mobilized derelict space and various articulations of “nature” as settings and signifiers that decenter traditional understandings of the city to represent New York alternately as a desolate wasteland, a hostile wilderness, a refuge and playground for outcasts, a home to resilient and resourceful communities, a studio for artistic experimentation, an arcadia conducive to alternative social arrangements, and a complex ecosystem.
This book will be of interest to scholars and students of film studies, media studies, urban cinema, urban studies, and eco-cinema.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Broken Windows, Broken People: The City in Decline as Wasteland
2. It’s a Jungle Out There: The City in Decline as Wilderness
3. At Home and at Play: Reimagining the Social Uses of Derelict Spaces
4. From Studio to Street: Derelict Spaces and the Artistic Reimagination of the City
5. Greening the City: Reimagining the Nature of New York
Epilogue: Legacies of Decline and Reimagination in Cinematic New York
Filmography
Index
Cortland Rankin is Assistant Professor of Film Studies in the Department of Theatre and Film at Bowling Green State University, USA. His research interests include the relationship between film and postindustrial American urbanism as well as war cinema and media, particularly as it concerns film and television of the Korean War.