New Books in Film

Love and Mercy A film by Bill Pohlad Love and Mercy (2014) is a film that shows how the sausage is made, in terms of both the music and the man. We get to see Brian Wilson’s Kubrick-like devotion to getting Pet Sounds exactly like he wants it, as well as his becoming a whole person through the force of his future wife.

Since the debut of These Are My Children in 1949, the daytime television soap opera has been foundational to the history of the medium as an economic, creative, technological, social, and cultural institution. In Her Stories, Elana Levine draws on archival research and her experience as a longtime soap fan to provide a

Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Kevin Guyan reveals how the fight for LGBTQ equalities in the UK is shaped – and constrained – by the classifications we encounter every day. Looking across six systems – the police and the recording of hate crimes; dating

It’s the UConn Popcast, and we analyze the movie Sinners, starring Michael B. Jordan, just released on streaming. We address the political themes of the movie, focusing on its generic identity as a Southern Gothic, the historical context in which the movie takes place, its engagement with ideas of utopia, community, fr

American Gangster (2007) is Ridley Scott’s homage to The French Connection: it’s got the right cars, clothes, and colors and is based on another true story of an obsessed cop trying to take down a drug kingpin. The feature (or the bug, depending on how you look at it) is Denzel Washington in the title role. Is an actor

Picturing Aura: A Visual Biography (MIT Press, 2025) by Dr. Jeremy Stolow is the first book of its kind: an extended historical, anthropological, and philosophical study of modern efforts to visualize the hidden radiant force encompassing the living body known as our aura. This rich, interdisciplinary study by Dr. Stol