Gentrification and Screen Media
Ipek A. Celik Rappas and Noelle GriffisIpek Celik Rappas and Noelle Griffis select some key texts on film/TV and gentrification.
In This Issue
The Mediapolis Q&A: Caitlin Bruce on Voices in Aerosol
Caitlin Bruce and Scott RodgersScott Rodgers talks to Caitlin Bruce about her recent book, Voices in Aerosol.
Voices Episode 7: Caitlin Bruce on Graffiti Culture and Urban Institutional Attunement
Scott RodgersIn the latest episode of our Voices podcast series, Caitlin Bruce discusses with Scott Rodgers her recent book exploring shifting judgments of graffiti culture in urban Mexico, and how the book has taken on new life as socially-engaged scholarship.
The Mediapolis Q&A: Pamela Robertson Wojcik on Unhomed: Cycles of Mobility and Placelessness in American Cinema
Adam Ochonicky and Pamela Robertson WojcikAdam Ochonicky talks to Pamela Robertson Wojcik about her latest book, Unhomed: Cycles of Mobility and Placelessness in American Cinema.
International Videoletters: Feminists’ Hope and Our Own Self-Grown Media
Ariel DoughertyInternational Videoletters (1975–1977) was a groundbreaking feminist media network that connected communities across cities through grassroots video exchanges. Looking back on her involvement with the group, Ariel Dougherty explains its significance and emphasizes the importance of preserving its artifacts for feminist media history.
Bologna and its Computing Centers: An Archaeology of Urban Media (1961–2022)
Stefano CorboBologna is one of the main data processing hubs in Europe. Stefano Corbo traces the infrastructural and architectural development of the city’s computer centers, arguing that to understand the recent history of the city, we must pay attention to the material history of data.
Marketing Nation: The Spectacular Outdoor Advertisements of Douglas Leigh in Postwar America
Jane ZhangFrom electronic billboards to spectacular dirigibles, the outdoor advertising of Douglas Leigh incorporated theatrical techniques into the urban landscape. Jane Zhang shows how Leigh’s corporate campaigns mediated the relationship between individual and national identity in postwar America.
Previous Issue
Artifacts of Urban Digitization: The Digital Commoditization of the Urban Environment in Rome
Kaitlyn Adèle Barrett-GullionIn this Student Voices essay, Kaitlyn Adèle Barrett-Gullion uses visual ethnographic methods to analyse photographic practices at a series of “Instagrammable” locations in Rome.
TV Representation of Female Drug Abuse Within the Urban Night
Ava DeAngelisIn this Student Voices essay, Ava DeAngelis compares the representation of female drug abuse and the urban night in two television series, Euphoria and Gossip Girl.
Fear On and Off Screen: Constructing Women’s Fear of the Urban Night in Film
Marica LoffredaIn this Student Voices essay, Marica Loffreda explores how the female fear of the urban night is reproduced by screen representations of sexual assault.
Introduction: Teaching Urban Media
Eleonora DiamantiEleonora Diamanti discusses designing the syllabus for her course “Urban Media” and introduces the essays in the Student Voices section.
The Pretorian Paradise Paradox: Waiting and Contemplating in the Middling City
Chris BroodrykIn the lead-up to South Africa’s first democratic elections, the television series Tropical Heat used Pretoria to double as a fictional Florida city. Chris Broodryk considers the complex political dynamics of the series and its transformation of Pretoria into a “retrotopian” space.
A Summer in a City in the Middle of the Desert: Visions of Mexicali, Mexico, in Levantamuertos (2013)
Georgina CebeyGeorgina Cebey analyses the distinctive image of Mexicali in Levantamuertos (2013), arguing that the film’s exploration of the “slow violence” of everyday life challenges stereotypical representations of the Mexican border.
Mature Adults Only: Italian Cinema in Middling Western Pennsylvania Cities
Chris HiteChris Hite explores the popularity of Italian cinema in the “middling” industrial towns of Western Pennsylvania in the early twentieth century and traces how shifts in distribution and exhibition practices for foreign films marginalized these markets after World War II.
Introduction: Screen Media and ‘Middling Cities’ – Questioning Hierarchies, Dominant Narratives and Negative Associations
Lavinia Brydon, Sanele KaNtshingana and Janina SchuppIn their dossier introduction, the editors discuss the significance of “middling cities” to debates about media and urbanism, and make a case for the importance of looking beyond metropolitan centres and global media capitals.