Modern and Postmodern Cutting Edge Films closely examines a wide variety of major filmic texts that have established permanent, iconic shifts in modern and postmodern US culture and filmic practices. These films and their often visionary, trend-setting auteurs each introduced new manners of seeing that were imitated by later directors and ultimately, absorbed by popular culture itself. The primary rationale for writing this collection was quite simple: it is new and different. No anthology exists that examines the concept of the cutting edge film across such a remarkably wide variety of genres and with such a diversity of theoretical approaches and subject matter. Equally important, all the contributors bring a unique voice and multi-disciplinary perspective to their respective chapters. This anthology will be of great interest to scholars from a variety of disciplines, including film studies, historical studies, and gender and genre studies. As far as possible, contributors have minimized a great deal of typical theoretical terminology so that lay readers who possess some familiarity with basic film analysis and theory can understand the text. It can be used as a classroom text in both graduate and upper-level undergraduate film classes. Modern and Postmodern Cutting Edge Films is an anthology that instructors of film theory and history can use for many years to come. Indeed, we feel that this remarkable collection of essays will itself become an indispensable, cutting edge text of film scholarship.
About the Author: Anthony Hughes, Ph.D. is currently Professor of English at Hilbert College in Hamburg, NY where he teaches classes in Film Studies, Creative Writing, Poetry, and Literature. He also directs the College's Creative Studies Program which includes concentrations in Creative Writing and Film Studies. He completed his BA in English and his MA in Creative Writing, Poetry, from SUNY at Buffalo. He also received his Ph.D. in English from SUNY at Buffalo where he studied Film Theory, Hawthorne, and Gender Studies. Over the past twenty years, he has presented numerous essays on education, writing, and film at local, regional, and national conferences and published poems in a wide variety of book anthologies, journals, and magazines. Most recently, he won runner up in the 2007 Bridport Poetry Prize in England for his poem, Ephemeral, and an Honorable Mention from the 2007 New Millennium poetry contest for his poem, Bliss. Dr. Hughes lives in Orchard Park, NY with his wife and son. Miranda J. Hughes, PhD, has been an editor/writer for 20 years. Dr. Hughes received her BS from SUNY Buffalo and her Ph.D. from Weill Cornell University (NY, NY). She currently works at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (www.nccn.org) as a Senior Medical Writer.