The Animation Studies Reader

Description

The Animation Studies Reader brings together both key writings within animation studies and new material in emerging areas of the field. The collection provides readers with seminal texts that ground animation studies within the contexts of theory and aesthetics, form and genre, and issues of representation. The first section collates key readings on animation theory, on how we might conceptualise animation, and on some of the fundamental qualities of animation. New material is also introduced in this section specifically addressing questions raised by the nature, style and materiality of animation. The second section outlines some of the main forms that animation takes, which includes discussions of genre. Although this section cannot be exhaustive, the material chosen is particularly useful as it provides samples of analysis that can illuminate some of the issues the first section of the book raises. The third section focuses on issues of representation and how the medium of animation might have an impact on how bodies, gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity are represented. These representations can only be read through an understanding of the questions that the first two sections of the book raise; we can only decode these representations if we take into account form and genre, and theoretical conceptualisations such as visual pleasure, spectacle, the uncanny, realism etc. Cover Contents List of Figures List of Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Part 1 Theory, Philosophy and Concepts 1 Approaching Animation and Animation Studies 2 The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectators and the Avant-Garde 3 Re-Animating Space 4 Realism and Animation 5 The Uncanny Valley 6 Animation and Performance 7 Animation and Memory 8 Some Thoughts on Theory–Practice Relationships in Animation Studies Part 2 Forms and Genres 9 Absence, Excess and Epistemological Expansion: Towards a Framework for the Study of Animated Documentary 10 Experimental Animation 11 Features and Shorts 12 Advertising and Public Service Films 13 Political Animation and Propaganda 14 TV Animation and Genre 15 Animation and/as Children’s Entertainment 16 Video Games and Animation Part 3 Representation: Frames and Contexts 17 Race, Resistance and Violence in Cartoons 18 We’re Asian. More Expected of Us: The Model Minority and Whiteness in King of the Hill 19 Transformers: Rescue Bots: Representation in Disguise 20 Anime’s Bodies 21 Women in Disney’s Animated Features 1989–2005 22 Taking an Appropriate Line: Exploring Representations of Disability within British Mainstream Animation Index