Robert Stam Bücher

First published in 1992. New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics provides a comprehensive lexicon of semiotic concepts. With sections on linguistics, narratology, psychoanalysis and intertextuality, it constructs an indispensable dictionary for film theory, defining over five hundred critical terms. The authors address key aspects of contemporary semiotics and cultural debate, while referring to the work of key figures such as Peirce, Saussure, Derrida, Barthes, Propp, Genette, Greimas, Kristeva, Lacan, Metz, Bellour, Heath, Mulvey, Johnston, Rose, Doane, Bakhtin and Baudrillard. The semiotic concepts are illustrated by examples drawn from the films of directors such as Welles, Dreyer, Brunel, Godard, Hitchcock, Varda, Akerman and Woody Allen. Although especially geared to the needs of film students, New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics should be useful for scholars in all areas of the arts, philosophy and literature.

This work is an introduction to film theory, particularly aimed at those studying film and literature as it examines issues common to both subjects such as realism, illusionism, narration, style and semiotics.

Reflexivity refers to those moments in fiction and film when the work suddenly calls attention to itself as a fictional construct. For example, in literature a character might suddenly step out of the story and address the reader.

Indigeneity and the Decolonizing Gaze orchestrates an unprecedented conversation between French philosophers, Brazilian modernists, and indigenous artists and thinkers from North and South America. Against the long historical backdrop of 1492, Columbus, and the Conquest, Robert Stam's wide-ranging study traces a trajectory from the representation of indigenous peoples by others to self-representation by indigenous peoples as a form of resistance to colonial capitalism. In this indigenous sequel to the foundational text Unthinking Eurocentrism (with Ella Shohat), Stam counterpoints the western mediated gaze on the 'Indian' and the indigenous gaze itself, especially as incarnated in the burgeoning movement of 'indigenous media', that is, the use of audio-visual-digital media for the social and cultural purposes of indigenous peoples themselves. Drawing on examples from cinema, literature, music, video, painting, and stand-up comedy, Stam shows how indigenous artists intellectuals, and activists have offered ideas profoundly relevant to the multiple crises - climatological, economic, political, racial, and cultural - afflicting the contemporary world.