They Must Be Represented examines documentary in print, photography, television and film from the 1930s through the 1980s, using the lens of recent feminist film theory as well as scholarship on race, class and gender emerging from the new interdisciplinary approach of American cultural studies. Paula Rabinowitz discusses the ways in which these four media shaped truth-claims and political agency over the decades: in the 1930s, about poverty, labor and popular culture during the depression; in the 1960s, about the Vietnam War, racism, work and counterculture; and in the 1980s, about feminist and gay critiques of gender, history, narrative and cinema. A great deal of documentary expression has been influenced by developments in cultural anthropology, as committed artists brought their cameras and typewriters into the field not only to report, but also to change the world. Yet recently the projects of both anthropology and documentary have come under scrutiny. Rabinowitz argues that the gendering of vision that occurs when narratives confirm to conventional genres profoundly affects the relation of documentarian to subject. She goes on to define this gendering of vision in documentary as an ethnographic process. Ultimately, this polemical study challenges the construction of the spectator in psychoanalytic film theory, and articulates a new model for theorizing power relations in culture and history.

This wide-ranging study traces the history of the documentary from the first Lumiere films to Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11'. Chanan argues that documentary makes a vital contribution to the public sphere - where ideas are debated, opinion formed and those in authority are held to account.

Belinda Smaill proposes an original approach to documentary studies, examining how emotions such as pleasure, hope, pain, empathy, nostalgia or disgust are integral both to the representation of selfhood in documentary, and to the way documentaries circulate in the public sphere.

By putting students in direct touch with the inner workings of the political system, The Real World of American Politics provides them with direct, concrete access to the nuts-and-bolts—the real world—of American government. In all the standard areas of American political practice, working documents provide serious insight into the stakes, values, and processes that drive and inform the political system. For example, looking carefully at the text of an actual bill deeply enhances learning about the legislative process, and the strengths and weaknesses of public opinion polling become clearer if a student has an opportunity to examine a real life survey instrument. Organized thematically to reflect the way that many introductory courses are taught, the documents are accompanied by brief, accessible, and informative introductory materials that place them in their proper historical, political, and theoretical contexts. Each section also includes study questions to guide student reading and inquiry. Whether used as the core text or in conjunction with a standard textbook, The Real World of American Politics is the only book on the market that takes students inside the political process as it actually unfolds. Features A well-organized and carefully curated volume that includes a wide variety of on-the-ground documents composing a representative selection of raw materials, procedures, and outcomes characteristic of the political process itself. Brief, accessible, and informative introductory discussions that place each document in its proper historical, political, and theoretical context. Carefully chosen study questions, designed both to guide student inquiry and to suggest possible paper topics or exam questions, accompanying each document

Public television's original mandate required it to address issues of controversy and facilitate the inclusion of voices and perspectives from outside the established consensus. Through detailed chronology, the author of this text traces how far this obligation has been met.

The chapters in this book show the important role that political documentary cinema has played in Latin America since the 1950s. Political documentary cinema in Latin America has a long history of tracing social injustice and suffering, depicting political unrest, intervening in periods of crisis and upheaval, and reflecting upon questions about ideology, cultural identity, genocide and traumatic memory. This collection bears witness to the region's film culture's diversity, discussing documentaries about workers' strikes, riots, and military coups against elected governments; crime, poverty, homelessness, prostitution, children's work, and violence against women; urban development, progress, (under)development, capitalism, and neoliberalism; exile, diaspora and border cultures; trauma and (post)memory. The chapters focus on documentaries made in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, and Venezuela, as well as on the work of Latino and diasporic Latin American political documentarians. The contributors to the anthology reflect the cultural and linguistic diversity of current Latin American film scholarship, with some writing in Spanish and Portuguese from Argentina and Brazil (with their original works especially translated), and others writing in English from Australia, Europe, and the USA. This book was originally published as a special issue of Social Identities.

"What issues, of both form and content, shape the documentary film? What role does visual evidence play in relation to a documentary's arguments about the world in which we live? Can a documentary be believed, and why or why not? How do documentaries abide by or subvert ethical expectations? Are mockumentaries a form of subversion? In what ways can the documentary be an aesthetic experience and at the same time have political or social impact? And how can such impacts be empirically measured? Pioneering film scholar Bill Nichols investigates the ways in which documentaries strive for accuracy and truthfulness, but simultaneously fabricate a form that shapes reality. Such films may rely on re-enactment to re-create the past, storytelling to provide satisfying narratives, and rhetorical figures such as metaphor and expressive forms such as irony to make a point. In many ways documentaries are a fiction unlike any other. With clarity and passion, Nichols offers close readings of several provocative documentaries including Land without Bread, Restrepo, The Thin Blue Line, The Act of Killing, and Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine as part of an authoritative examination of the layered approaches and delicate ethical balance demanded of documentary filmmakers"--Provided by publisher.

Intelligence Work establishes a new genealogy of American social documentary, proposing a fresh critical approach to the aesthetic and political issues of nonfiction cinema and media. Jonathan Kahana argues that the use of documentary film by intellectuals, activists, government agencies, and community groups constitutes a national-public form of culture, one that challenges traditional oppositions between official and vernacular speech, between high art and popular culture, and between academic knowledge and common sense. Placing iconic images and the work of celebrated filmmakers next to overlooked and rediscovered productions, Kahana demonstrates how documentary collects and delivers the evidence of the American experience to the public sphere, where it lends force to political movements and gives substance to the social imaginary.

Beyond Bias offers the first scholarly study of contemporary right-wing documentary film and video. Drawing from contemporary work in political theory and psychoanalytic theory, the book identifies what author Scott Krzych describes as the hysterical discourse prolific in conservative documentary in particular, and right-wing media more generally. In its hysterical mode, conservative media emphasizes form over content, relies on the spectacle of debate to avoid substantive dialogue, mimics the aesthetic devices of its opponents, reduces complex political issues to moral dichotomies, and relies on excessive displays of opinion to produce so much mediated "noise" as to drown out alternative perspectives or viewpoints. Though often derided for its reliance on nonsense or hyperbole, conservative media marshals incoherence as its prized aesthetic and rhetorical weapon, a means to bolster the political status quo precisely by confusing those audiences who come into its orbit. As a work of documentary studies, Beyond Bias also places conservative non-fiction films in conversation with their more conventional counterparts, drawing insight from the manner by which conservative media hystericizes such issues as the archive, observational methods, directorial participation, and the often moral imperatives by which documentary filmmakers attempt to offer insight into their subjects.

In The Migrant Image T. J. Demos examines the ways contemporary artists have reinvented documentary practices in their representations of mobile lives: refugees, migrants, the stateless, and the politically dispossessed. He presents a sophisticated analysis of how artists from the United States, Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East depict the often ignored effects of globalization and the ways their works connect viewers to the lived experiences of political and economic crisis. Demos investigates the cinematic approaches Steve McQueen, the Otolith Group, and Hito Steyerl employ to blur the real and imaginary in their films confronting geopolitical conflicts between North and South. He analyzes how Emily Jacir and Ahlam Shibli use blurs, lacuna, and blind spots in their photographs, performances, and conceptual strategies to directly address the dire circumstances of dislocated Palestinian people. He discusses the disparate interventions of Walid Raad in Lebanon, Ursula Biemann in North Africa, and Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri in the United States, and traces how their works offer images of conflict as much as a conflict of images. Throughout Demos shows the ways these artists creatively propose new possibilities for a politics of equality, social justice, and historical consciousness from within the aesthetic domain.