Table of Contents:
  • Introduction : violence and American cinema : notes for an investigation / J. David Slocum
  • Violence and film / William Rothman
  • The violence of a perfect moment / Leo Charney
  • Violence American style : the narrative orchestration of violent attractions / Marsha Kinder
  • "Clean, dependable slapstick" : comic violence and the emergence of classical Hollywood cinema / Peter Kramer
  • The spectacle of criminality / Richard Maltby
  • Murder's tongue : identity, death, and the city in film noir / Paul Archer
  • Violence in the film western / Lee Clark Mitchell
  • Passion and acceleration : generic change in the action film / Rikke Schubart
  • Black violence as cinema : from cheap thrills to historical agonies / Ed Guerrero
  • Documenting domestic violence in American films / Phyllis Frus
  • Splitting the difference : global identity politics and the representation of torture in the counterhistorical dramatic film / Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg
  • Holocaust film criticism and the politics of Judeo-Christian phenomenology / Terri Ginsberb.