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This book reflects and analyzes the relationship between media and genre, focusing on both aesthetics and discursive meaning. It considers genres as having a decisive impact on media cultures, either in film, on TV, in computer games, comics or radio, on the level of production as well as reception. The book discusses the role of genres in media and cultural theory as a configuration of media artifacts that share specific aesthetic characteristics. It also reflects genre as a concept of categorization of media artifacts with which the latter can be analyzed under terms depending on a specific historical situation or cultural context. A special focus is placed on trans-media perspectives. Even as genres develop their own traditions within one medium, they reach beyond a media-specific horizon, necessitating a double perspective that considers the distinct recourse to genre within a medium as well as the trans-media circulation and adaption of genres.
List of contents
Part I.- Genres in Media and Cultural Theory, Yvonne Tasker.- Genre in Action: The Impossibility and Value of Genre Analysis, Ivo Ritzer.- Trespass: Genre, Author, and Play in the Discourse of Media Aesthetics, Hannah Schoch.- Genre Affordances: Hamilton, An American Musical and the Political Dynamics of Cultural Circulation.- Part II.- Trans-media Perspectives, Karina Kirsten.- Genre Processes in Dialogic Constellations: Bates Motel, Peter W. Schulze.- Tango, Samba and Ranchera: The Trans/National Cultural Economy of Latin American Musicals (1930s-50s), Katja Hettich.- Can You Feel the Love Tonight? The Cognitive and Affective Conditions of Romance, Meike Sarah Reinerth.- Political Genres of Online Animation: Genre Theory, Animation Studies, and Digital Media.- Part III.- Re-thinking Genres in Film Studies, Johannes Pause / Niels-Oliver Walkowski.- Zombies, Conspiracies, and Aesthetics in Crisis, Irina Gradinari.- Ideology Dialogues: The DEFA Antifascist Film, Florian Mundhenke.- Documentary as Genre or Mode? Roger Odin's and Gérard Genette's Answers from the Viewpoint of Pragma-semiotics and Narratology.
About the author
Ivo Ritzer is a professor of media studies at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. He has given invited talks all over the world and has published a large number of essays, monographs, and edited volumes with topics such as media aesthetics, media philosophy, and media archaeology. His most recent publications include
Key Works in Media Studies (2020),
Politics of the Popular: Media - Culture - Theory (2019),
Media Theory of Globalization (2018), and
Media Dispositives (2018).
