This book offers a concise overview of the social, cultural, and aesthetic sensibilities of the Beat Generation, explaining how their drastic visions and radical styles challenged postwar America's dominant values in ways that can still be felt in literature, cinema, music, theatre, and the visual arts.

Film critic David Sterritt presents an interdisciplinary exploration of the Beat Generation, its intersections with main-stream and experimental film, and the interactions of all of these with American society and the culture of the 1950s. Sterritt balances the Beat countercultural goal of rebellion through both artistic creation and everyday behavior against the mainstream values of conformity and conservatism, growing worry over cold-war hostilities, and the "rat race" toward material success. After an introductory overview of the Beat Generation, its history, its antecedents, and its influences, Sterritt shows the importance of "visual thinking" in the lives and works of major Beat authors, most notably Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. He turns to Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogic theory to portray the Beat writers-who were inspired by jazz and other liberating influences-as carnivalesque rebels against what they perceived as a rigid and stifling social order. Showing the Beats as social critics, Sterritt looks at the work of 1950s photographers Robert Frank and William Klein; the attack against Beat culture in the pictures and prose of Life magazine; and the counterattack in Frank's film Pull My Daisy, featuring key Beat personalities. He further explores expressions of rebelliousness in film noir, the melodramas of director Douglas Sirk, and other Hollywood films. Finally, Sterritt shows the changing attitudes toward the Beat sensibility in Beat-related Hollywood movies like A Bucket of Blood and The Beat Generation; television programs like Route 66 and The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis; nonstudio films like John Cassavetes's improvisational Shadows and Shirley Clarke's experimental The Connection; and radically avant-garde works by such doggedly independent screen artists as Stan Brakhage, Ron Rice, Bruce Connor, and Ken Jacobs, drawing connections between their achievements and the most subversive products of their Beat contemporaries.

The Films of Jean-Luc Godard examines the work of one of the most versatile and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. With a career ranging from France's New Wave movement in the early 1960s to a period of political experimentation in the late 1960s and 70s, and, currently, a contemplative period in which Godard has explored issues of spirituality, sexuality, and the aesthetics of sound, image, and montage, the filmmaker's work defies easy categorization. In this study, David Sterritt offers an introductory overview of Godard's work as a filmmaker, critic, and video artist. In subsequent chapters, he traces Godard's visionary ideas through six of his key films, including Breathless, My Life to Live, Weekend, Numéro deux, Hail Mary, and Nouvelle Vague formats. Linking Godard's works to key social and cultural developments, The Films of Jean-Luc Godard explains their importance in modernist and postmodernist art of the last half century.

A remarkable work of memoir and investigative journalism focusing on missing and murdered Indigenous women, written by an award-winning Gitxsan journalist who survived life on the streets against all odds. As a Gitxsan teenager navigating life on the streets, Angela Sterritt wrote in her journal to help her survive and find her place in the world. Now an acclaimed journalist, she writes for major news outlets to push for justice and to light a path for Indigenous women, girls, and survivors. In her brilliant debut, Sterritt shares her memoir alongside investigative reporting into cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada, showing how colonialism and racism led to a society where Sterritt struggled to survive as a young person, and where the lives of Indigenous women and girls are ignored and devalued. Growing up, Sterritt was steeped in the stories of her ancestors: grandparents who carried bentwood boxes of berries, hunted and trapped, and later fought for rights and title to that land. But as a vulnerable young woman, kicked out of the family home and living on the street, Sterritt inhabited places that, today, are infamous for being communities where women have gone missing or been murdered: Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, and, later on, Northern BC's Highway of Tears. Sterritt faced darkness: she experienced violence from partners and strangers and saw friends and community members die or go missing. But she navigated the street, group homes, and SROs to finally find her place in journalism and academic excellence at university, relying entirely on her own strength, resilience, and creativity along with the support of her ancestors and community to find her way. "She could have been me," Sterritt acknowledges today, and her empathy for victims, survivors, and families drives her present-day investigations into the lives of missing and murdered Indigenous women. In the end, Sterritt steps into a place of power, demanding accountability from the media and the public, exposing racism, and showing that there is much work to do on the path towards understanding the truth. But most importantly, she proves that the strength and brilliance of Indigenous women is unbroken, and that together, they can build lives of joy and abundance.

New York, more than any other city, has held a special fascination for filmmakers and viewers. In every decade of Hollywood filmmaking, artists of the screen have fixated upon this fascinating place for its tensions and promises, dazzling illumination and fearsome darkness. The glittering skyscrapers of such films as On the Town have shadowed the characteristic seedy streets in which desperate, passionate stories have played out-as in Scandal Sheet and The Pawnbroker. In other films, the city is a cauldron of bright lights, technology, empire, egotism, fear, hunger, and change--the scenic epitome of America in the modern age. From Street Scene and Breakfast at Tiffany's to Rosemary's Baby, The Warriors, and 25th Hour, the sixteen essays in this book explore the cinematic representation of New York as a city of experience, as a locus of ideographic characters and spaces, as a city of moves and traps, and as a site of allurement and danger. Contributors consider the work of Woody Allen, Blake Edwards, Alfred Hitchcock, Gregory La Cava, Spike Lee, Sidney Lumet, Vincente Minnelli, Roman Polanski, Martin Scorsese, Andy Warhol, and numerous others.

He became a movie star playing The Man With No Name, and today his name is known around the world. Measured by longevity, productivity, and profits, Clint Eastwood is the most successful actor-director-producer in American film history. This book examines the major elements of his career, focusing primarily on his work as a director but also exploring the evolution of his acting style, his long association with screen violence, his interest in jazz, and the political views – sometimes hotly controversial – reflected in his films and public statements. Especially fascinating is the pivotal question that divides critics and moviegoers to this day: is Eastwood a capable director with a photogenic face, a modest acting talent, and a flair for marketing his image? Or is he a true cinematic auteur with a distinctive vision of America's history, traditions, and values? From A Fistful of Dollars and Dirty Harry to Million Dollar Baby and beyond, The Cinema of Clint Eastwood takes a close-up look at one of the screen's most influential and charismatic stars.

This timely collection of essays on British and European Catholic spiritualities explores how ideas of the sacred have influenced female relationships with piety and religious vocations over time. Each of the studies focuses on specific persons or groups within the varied contexts of England, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, together spanning the medieval period through to the nineteenth century. Examining the interplay between women's religious roles and patriarchal norms, the volume highlights the relevance of gender and spirituality through a wide geographical and chronological spectrum. It is an essential resource for students of Gender History, Women's Studies and Religious Studies, introducing a wealth of new research and providing an approachable guide to current debates and methodologies. Contributions by: Nancy Jiwon Cho, Frances E. Dolan, Rina Lahav, Jenna Lay, Laurence Lux-Sterritt, Carmen M. Mangion, Querciolo Mazzonis, Marit Monteiro, Elizabeth Rhodes, Kate Stogdon, Anna Welch

"David Sterritt is widely recognized as one of the most knowledgeable, perceptive, and accessible commentators on Alfred Hitchcock’s career. He makes a convincing case for the charm, technical innovativeness, and often perverse wit of Hitchcock’s films and television shows while, at the same time, not shying away from exploring troubling aspects of his career. Relax with this delightful book and prepare for the illumination and sheer pleasure it delivers." —William Luhr, author of Thinking About Movies: Watching, Questioning, Enjoying and Professor of English at Saint Peter's University From Dial M for Murder and Vertigo to North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) made some of the most memorable thrillers in the history of cinema. Acclaimed for both his daring artistic innovations and his irrepressible showmanship, Hitchcock blended suspense, humor, and psychologically unsettling themes to create an extraordinary body of work. In Simply Hitchcock, author and movie critic David Sterritt explores the celebrated director’s entire career, from its beginnings in the British silent film industry to its glory days in Hollywood. He shows Hitchcock as a consummate artist who dealt with deep existential and psychological issues, as well as a mischievous prankster who loved playing tricks on the audience and never lost a chance to pull a dead rabbit out of a hat. With wit and erudition, Simply Hitchcock paints a comprehensive portrait of a brilliant and complex man, who not only made indelible films, but also succeeded in establishing himself as the most instantly recognizable movie director of all time.