EpisodeReplay: Is Painting Dead?
In 1839 upon learning of the first steps toward photography, French painter Paul Delaroche is said to have quipped, “From today on, painting is dead.” No one is quite sure …
EpisodeThe Comic Era
They’ve been linked with delinquency and illiteracy and were decried for their sexual content. A Senate subcommittee even met to discuss their effect on America’s youth. Sound familiar? No, we’re …
EpisodeMean Screen Babes
From the female warriors of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to the superhuman heroines of X-Men, tough women are breaking box office records. Some look at these screen fighter babes as …
EpisodeReplay: Listening to Film
How effective would the famous shower scene in Psycho be without the screeching violins? Director Alfred Hitchcock’s own self-doubts led to an intense jealousy of Bernard Hermann, the composer of …
EpisodeDepicting Reality: Portrayals of Gay and Bi-Racial Individuals
After garnering public attention in the early 1980s, AIDS began appearing in film and on television. Communications professor Kylo-Patrick Hart (University of Virginia-Wise) says generally AIDS sufferers have been portrayed as either …
EpisodeListening to Film
How effective would the famous shower scene in Psycho be without the screeching violins? Director Alfred Hitchcock’s own self-doubts led to an intense jealousy of Bernard Hermann, the composer of …
EpisodeO’Keeffe in Williamsburg
Curators at the College of William and Mary are recreating a little-known exhibition of paintings by Georgia OKeeffe held at the school for six days in 1938. OKeeffe, who lived …
EpisodeThe History of Screen Violence
Violence on the big screen is as old as film itself. In 1903 The Great Train Robbery featured the on-screen massacre of train robbers, and D.W. Griffiths’ 1916 film Intolerance …
EpisodeCreating from Trauma
Some say child sexual abuse is perpetuated by those who know of incest and child molestation but remain silent. Joyce Allen (Virginia Foundation for the Humanities), a survivor of incest, is …
EpisodeIt’s a Chemical Reaction: The Science of Love
Men and women are not just being superficial when they fall in love with attractive people: they are responding to a combination of voluntary and involuntary neurobiological processes. James L. Olds …
EpisodeBloody Promenade
English professor Stephen Cushman (University of Virginia) reflects on the complexities and contemporary reverberations of the Civil War in his new book on the bloody Battle of the Wilderness, in which as …
EpisodeImages of Madness: Media and the Mentally Ill
From The Silence of the Lambs to news coverage of Jeffrey Dahmer case, the media paints a detailed and disturbing picture of mental illness. George Mason University sociologist Otto Wahl, author of Media Madness, …
