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Kubrick's Mitteleuropa
The Central European Imaginary in the Films of Stanley Kubrick
Edited by Nathan Abrams and Jeremi Szaniawski
232 pages, 12 figs., bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-80539-645-1 $135.00/£99.00 / Hb / Not Yet Published (October 2024)
eISBN 978-1-80539-646-8 eBook Not Yet Published
Reviews
“This wide ranging, insightful collection of essays, with some fascinating insights into an unusual topic new to Kubrick studies, firmly and persuasively situates Stanley Kubrick's work in the art and culture of Central Europe.” • Robert P. Kolker, the University of Maryland
“An admirably multisided, cultured and suggestive inspection of some of the key ways in which works and intellectual traditions associated with Mitteleuropa cast shifting shadows across the oeuvre of Stanley Kubrick.” • Paul Coates, Western University, Canada
“This collection of essays provides informative, impressively researched commentary on an important but neglected aspect of Stanley Kubrick’s films. [...] The result is a major contribution to the growing literature on Kubrick’s art.” • James Naremore, Indiana University Bloomington
Description
Stanley Kubrick was arguably one of the most influential American directors of the post-World War II era, and his Central European Jewish heritage, though often overlooked, greatly influenced his oeuvre. Kubrick's Mitteleuropa explores this influence in ways that range from his work with Hungarian and Polish composers Bela Bartok, György Ligeti, and Krzysztof Penderecki to the visual inspiration of artists such as Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, and other central European Modernists. Beyond exploring the Mitteleuropa sensibility in Kubrick's films, the contributions in this volume also provide important commentary on the reception of his films in countries across Eastern Europe.
Nathan Abrams is a professor of film, as well as thelead director for the Centre for Film, Television and Screen Studiesat Bangor University in Wales.He is a founding co-editor of Jewish Film and New Media: An International Journal, and his most recent books include Kubrick: An Odyssey (Pegasus Books, 2024), Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of His Final Film (Oxford University Press, 2019), and Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual (Rutgers University Press, 2018), as well as the edited collections Eyes Wide Shut: Behind Stanley Kubrick’s Masterpiece (Liverpool University Press, 2023), and The Bloomsbury Companion to Stanley Kubrick (Bloomsbury, 2021).
Jeremi Szaniawski is Associate Professor of comparative literature and film studies, and the Amesbury Professor of Polish Language and Culture in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the editor of After Kubrick: A Filmmaker’s Legacy (Bloomsbury, 2020), and of the online dossier “The Shining at 40” (Senses of Cinema, 2020), as well as the co-editor, among others, of Fredric Jameson and Film Theory: Marxism, Allegory, and Geopolitics in World Cinema (Rutgers University Press, 2022), and Gender, Power, and Identity in The Films of Stanley Kubrick (Routledge, 2023).