Harry M. Benshoff is Professor and Chair of Media Arts at the University of North Texas. His books include Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film (1997), Queer Images: A History of Gay and Lesbian Film in America (2006), Dark Shadows (2011), and the edited volume A Companion to the Horror Film (2014). His co-authored textbook America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies is now in its third edition.

Caryn Murphy is the Oshkosh Northwestern Endowed Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, where she teaches in the Department of Radio-TV-Film. Her research on the politics of race and gender in media representations has appeared in Media History, the Journal of Screenwriting, the Journal of Popular Culture, the Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, and edited collections including From Networks to Netflix (2018, 2022).

Foreword: About this book 1. Introduction to culture and cultural criticism 2. Concepts of ideology 3. Semiotics, structuralism, and beyond 4. Authorship and the auteur theory 5. Film and television genres 6. Psychoanalysis (part one): Basic concepts 7. Psychoanalysis (part two): Screen and apparatus theory 8. Feminist approaches to film and television 9. Film, television, and the postmodern 10. Cultural studies and reception 11. Audiences and fandoms 12. Beyond identity politics: Contemporary thinking on nation, race, gender, and sexuality