Since first launching in 2015, Luminos has served as one of UC Press’s flagship open access programs. Having published more than seventy-five full length scholarly monographs—fully open and available to the public for free— in a variety of disciplines, Luminos embodies the University of California mission to provide high quality, innovative, peer reviewed research for widespread consumption and debate.
Given the recent need for increased remote work and academic participation, UC Press is delighted to highlight the breadth of Luminos’s scholarly disciplines.
Cold War Cosmopolitanism
Period Style in 1950s Korean Cinema
by Christina Klein
“Engaging, nuanced, and bold, Klein’s study offers a comprehensive exploration of Han Hyung-mo’s films in their proper transnational, sociopolitical and cultural context. Bringing ‘film style’ to the forefront, Klein illustrates the importance of a broad cultural approach to the Cold War that centers art, gender, geopolitical dynamics, and historical legacies in the narrative.”
—Theodore Jun Yoo, author of It’s Madness: The Politics of Mental Health in Colonial Korea
Frame by Frame
A Materialist Aesthetics of Animated Cartoons
by Hannah Frank
“After reading Frame by Frame, it’s difficult to naively or passively watch a classic-era cartoon again, considering the erased labor that was alienated and mechanized, yet individuated—ultimately producing an artwork. Frank impressively ties together the imaginative pleasures of close analysis to rethink the trajectory of animation as more than a ‘history of drudgery.'”
—Film Comment
Parameters of Disavowal
Colonial Representation in South Korean Cinema
by Jinsoo An
“An’s study is complex as he deals with people and culture at different times—colonial days, the days of producing the films, and contemporary audiences and critics. His painstaking work of sorting and collecting relevant films and analyzing such a huge data set indeed represents a tremendous effort and achievement. The memory of colonial days should not be forgotten; Koreans have to embrace, cherish, and be able to confidently live with this enduring han.“
—Cross-Currents
Hokum!
The Early Sound Slapstick Short and Depression-Era Mass Culture
by Rob King
“King thus explores a series of critical questions about how cultural forms dwindle and reemerge . . . his work points toward a new avenue of research worth looking into when considering alternative constructions of American film history; instead of breaking down the myths that haunt much of film scholarship, the development of these very myths may reveal more about cultural consciousness.”
—Film Quarterly
Voices of Labor
Creativity, Craft, and Conflict in Global Hollywood
edited by by Michael Curtin and Kevin Sanson
“In this volume, we find the off-screen workers talking with love and excitement about their craft, the skill taken to accomplish a task, and the precarious condition they now confront in Global Hollywood due to diffusion of labour. . . . The book stands out for being an exercise in method—how extensive and in-depth field interviews can illuminate certain conceptual interests of screen studies.”
—Synoptique: An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies
Almost Hollywood, Nearly New Orleans
The Lure of the Local Film Economy
by Vicki Mayer
“Mayer offers compelling evidence for rethinking the material benefits of film tax credits. Using New Orleans as a case study is especially conducive towards understanding the effects of neoliberal cultural policy on the most marginalized areas of North America. Importantly, Mayer’s focus on intersections of race and class provide the necessary framework for thinking about how other local film economies . . . have dispossessed underprivileged communities. To that end, Mayer’s book offers a cautionary tale about the political embrace of an entrepreneurial film industry and its cultural, political, and economic effects.”
—Synoptique: An Online Journal for Film and Moving Image Studies