Critically acclaimed as one of the best television shows ever produced, the HBO series The Wire (2002–2008) is a landmark event in television history, offering a raw and dramatically compelling vision of the teeming drug trade and the vitality of life in the abandoned spaces of the postindustrial United States. With a sprawling narrative that dramatizes the intersections of race, urban history, and the neoliberal moment, The Wire offers an intricate critique of a society riven by racism and inequality.

In Connecting The Wire, Stanley Corkin presents the first comprehensive, season-by-season analysis of the entire series. Focusing on the show’s depictions of the built environment of the city of Baltimore and the geographic dimensions of race and class, he analyzes how The Wire’s creator and showrunner, David Simon, uses the show to develop a social vision of its historical moment, as well as a device for critiquing many social “givens.” In The Wire’s gritty portrayals of drug dealers, cops, longshoremen, school officials and students, and members of the judicial system, Corkin maps a web of relationships and forces that define urban social life, and the lives of the urban underclass in particular, in the early twenty-first century. He makes a compelling case that, with its embedded history of race and race relations in the United States, The Wire is perhaps the most sustained and articulate exploration of urban life in contemporary popular culture.

Television conveys powerful messages about sexual identities, and popular shows such as Will & Grace, Ellen, Glee, Modern Family, and The Fosters are often credited with building support for gay rights, including marriage equality. At the same time, however, many dismiss TV’s portrayal of LGBT characters and issues as “gay for pay”—that is, apolitical and exploitative programming created simply for profit. In The New Gay for Pay, Julia Himberg moves beyond both of these positions to investigate the complex and multifaceted ways that television production participates in constructing sexuality, sexual identities and communities, and sexual politics.

Himberg examines the production stories behind explicitly LGBT narratives and characters, studying how industry workers themselves negotiate processes of TV development, production, marketing, and distribution. She interviews workers whose views are rarely heard, including market researchers, public relations experts, media advocacy workers, political campaigners designing strategies for TV messaging, and corporate social responsibility department officers, as well as network executives and producers. Thoroughly analyzing their comments in the light of four key issues—visibility, advocacy, diversity, and equality—Himberg reveals how the practices and belief systems of industry workers generate the conceptions of LGBT sexuality and political change that are portrayed on television. This original approach complicates and broadens our notions about who makes media; how those practitioners operate within media conglomerates; and, perhaps most important, how they contribute to commonsense ideas about sexuality.

“On Story is film school in a box, a lifetime’s worth of filmmaking knowledge squeezed into half-hour packages.”
—Kenneth Turan, film critic for the Los Angeles Times

Austin Film Festival (AFF) is the first organization to focus on writers’ creative contributions to film and television. Its annual Film Festival and Conference offers screenings, panels, workshops, and roundtable discussions that help new writers and filmmakers connect with mentors and gain advice and insight from masters, as well as reinvigorate veterans with new ideas. To extend the Festival’s reach, AFF produces On Story, a television series currently airing on PBS-affiliated stations and streaming online that presents high-caliber artists talking candidly and provocatively about the art and craft of screenwriting and filmmaking, often using examples from their own work.

On Story—The Golden Ages of Television explores the transformation of television’s narrative content over the past several decades through interviews with some of TV’s best creators and writers, including Garry Shandling (The Larry Sanders Show), Carl Reiner (The Dick Van Dyke Show), Issa Rae (Insecure), Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad), Greg Daniels (The Office), Paula Pell (Saturday Night Live), Noah Hawley (Fargo), Liz Meriwether (New Girl), David Chase (The Sopranos), Alan Yang (Master of None), Marta Kauffman (Friends), Jenji Kohan (Orange Is the New Black), and many more. Their insights, behind-the-scenes looks at the creative process, production tales, responses to audiences’ reactions, and observations on how both TV narratives and the industry have changed make this book ideal for TV lovers, pop culture fans, students taking screenwriting courses, and filmmakers and writers seeking information and inspiration.

An advanced, student-centered textbook that uses popular media to explore diverse perspectives from across Russian-speaking cultures

Pro-dvizhenie is a student-centered, inquiry-based textbook designed to build Advanced-level Russian proficiency through engagement with timely topics that encourage reflection and examination. Whether exploring the role of technology in relationships, learning about indigenous communities of Russia, or reflecting on what it means to live well, Pro-dvizhenie uses popular Russian film, TV, and media as a springboard for various types of activities, including skill-building exercises, essay writing, and group projects. Students are encouraged to challenge assumptions and make intercultural connections throughout while developing ACTFL Advanced-level skills such as argumentation, narration, and collaboration.

Students benefit from extensive activities and resources, including audio and video of diverse voices and viewpoints from across Russia, available to stream on the Press website. A full-service textbook for instructors, Pro-dvizhenie includes extensive online instructors’ resources, such as additional grammar and vocabulary assignments, writing and group project prompts, grading rubrics, and answer keys. A modular structure and activities at various levels of difficulty give instructors the flexibility to select material in the book based on their class’s needs, making Pro-dvizhenie perfectly suited for mixed-level classrooms. The textbook can be used over one semester or over the course of a full year.

"Since when is Fran Drescher Jewish?" This was Chiara Francesca Ferrari's reaction when she learned that Drescher's character on the television sitcom The Nanny was meant to be a portrayal of a stereotypical Jewish-American princess. Ferrari had only seen the Italian version of the show, in which the protagonist was dubbed into an exotic, eccentric Italian-American nanny. Since When Is Fran Drescher Jewish? explores this "ventriloquism" as not only a textual and cultural transfer between languages but also as an industrial practice that helps the media industry foster identification among varying audiences around the globe.

At the heart of this study is an in-depth exploration of three shows that moved from global to local, mapping stereotypes from both sides of the Atlantic in the process. Presented in Italy, for example, Groundskeeper Willie from The Simpsons is no longer a belligerent, alcoholic Scotsman but instead easily becomes a primitive figure from Sardinia. Ironically, The Sopranos—a show built around Italian-Americans—was carefully re-positioned by Italian TV executives, who erased the word "mafia" and all regional references to Sicily. The result of Ferrari's three case studies is evidence that "otherness" transcends translation, as the stereotypes produced by the American entertainment industry are simply replaced by other stereotypes in foreign markets. As American television studios continue to attempt to increase earnings by licensing their shows abroad, Since When Is Fran Drescher Jewish? illuminates the significant issues of identity raised by this ever-growing marketplace, along with the intriguing messages that lie in the larger realm of audiovisual cultural exchange.

Fieldwork from across Afghanistan allowed Osman to record the voices of many Afghan media producers and people. Afghans offer their own seldom-heard views on the country's cultural progress and belief systems, their understandings of themselves, and the role of international interventions. Osman analyzes the impact of transnational media and foreign funding while keeping the focus on local cultural contestations, productions, and social movements. As a result, she redirects the global dialogue about Afghanistan to Afghans and challenges top-down narratives of humanitarian development.

When Lieutenant Uhura took her place on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise on Star Trek, the actress Nichelle Nichols went where no African American woman had ever gone before. Yet several decades passed before many other black women began playing significant roles in speculative (i.e., science fiction, fantasy, and horror) film and television—a troubling omission, given that these genres offer significant opportunities for reinventing social constructs such as race, gender, and class. Challenging cinema’s history of stereotyping or erasing black women on-screen, Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before showcases twenty-first-century examples that portray them as central figures of action and agency.

Writing for fans as well as scholars, Diana Adesola Mafe looks at representations of black womanhood and girlhood in American and British speculative film and television, including 28 Days Later, AVP: Alien vs. Predator, Children of Men, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Firefly, and Doctor Who: Series 3. Each of these has a subversive black female character in its main cast, and Mafe draws on critical race, postcolonial, and gender theories to explore each film and show, placing the black female characters at the center of the analysis and demonstrating their agency. The first full study of black female characters in speculative film and television, Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before shows why heroines such as Lex in AVP and Zoë in Firefly are inspiring a generation of fans, just as Uhura did.