Cartoons-both from the classic Hollywood era and from more contemporary feature films and television series-offer a rich field for detailed investigation and analysis. Contributors draw on theories and methodology from film, television, and media studies, art history and criticism, and feminism and gender studies.
Jane Pilling, freelance film programmer, journalist, and translator, also writes and teaches on film and animation, currently at the Royal College of Art in London. She recently made a six-part television series on European animation for UK television.
The Society for Animation Studies: A brief history by Harvey Deneroff
Introduction by Jayne Pilling
1. What is animation and who needs to know? An essay on definitions by Philip Kelley Denslow
2. 'Reality' effects in computer animation by Lev Manovich
3. Second-order realism and post-modern aesthetics in computer animation by Andy Darley
4. The Quay brothers' The Epic of Gilgamesh and the 'metaphysics of obscenity' by Steve Weiner
5. Narrative strategies for resistance and protest in Eastern European animation by William Moritz
6. Putting themselves in the pictures: Images of women in the work of Joanna Quinn, Candy Guard and Alison de Vere by Sandra Law
7. An analysis of Susan Pitt's Asparagus and Joanna Priestley's All My Relations by Sharon Couzin
8. Clay animation comes out of the inkwell: The Fleischer brothers and clay animation by Michael Frierson
9. Bartosch's The Idea by William Moritz
10. Norman McLaren and Jules Engel: Post-Modernists by William Moritz
11. Disney, Warner Bros. and Japanese animation by Luca Raffaelli
12. The theif of Buena Vista: Disney's Aladdin and Orientalism by Leslie Felperin
13. Animatophilia, cultural production and corporate interests: The case of Ren & Stimpy by Mark Langer
14. Francis Bacon and Walt Disney revisited by Simon Pummell
15. Body consciousness in the films of Jan Svankmajer by Paul Wells
16. Eisenstein and Stokes on Disney: Film animation and omnipotence by Michael O'Pray
17. Towards a post-modern animated discourse: Bakhtin, intertextuality and the cartoon carnival by Terrance R. Lindvall and J. Matthew Melton
18. Restoring the aesthetics of early abstract films by William Moritz
19. Risistance and subversion in animated films of the Nazi era: The case of Hans Fischerkoesen by William Moritz
20. European influences on early Disney feature films by Robin Allan
21. Norm Verguson and the Latin American films of Walt Disney by J. B. Kaufmann