Melissa Ooten is associate director of the WILL program and lecturer at the University of Richmond.

The growing scholarship of film censorship in America, and particularly, in the Jim Crow South sheds important light on the complex relationship between governance and popular culture. Melissa Ooten’s thorough study, Race, Gender, and Film Censorship in Virginia, 1922– 1965, is a welcome addition. . . .She convincingly argues that issues regarding not only race but also gender, sexuality, and class informed Virginia’s movie censorship. . . .Ooten’s examination of how discourses of race and gender informed Virginia’s censorship board is a vital contribution to understanding cinema and its exhibition in the Jim Crow South.

• Chapter I: Movie Censorship and Virginia: An Introduction Chapter II: The Project of Censorship: Debating the Movies in 1920s Virginia Chapter III: Censorship in Black and White: The Struggle to Maintain Racial Hierarchies at the Movies, 1920s-1930s Chapter IV: The Cultural Politics of Race and the Cold War Chapter V: The Search for Sexual Deviance: Regulating and Contesting Depictions of Female Sexuality On-Screen Chapter VI: Conclusion: Island in the Sun and the Demise of the Censorship Board Postscript: Regulating Film in the Age of the Internet

Melissa Ooten is associate director of the WILL program and lecturer at the University of Richmond.

The growing scholarship of film censorship in America, and particularly, in the Jim Crow South sheds important light on the complex relationship between governance and popular culture. Melissa Ooten’s thorough study, Race, Gender, and Film Censorship in Virginia, 1922– 1965, is a welcome addition. . . .She convincingly argues that issues regarding not only race but also gender, sexuality, and class informed Virginia’s movie censorship. . . .Ooten’s examination of how discourses of race and gender informed Virginia’s censorship board is a vital contribution to understanding cinema and its exhibition in the Jim Crow South.

• Chapter I: Movie Censorship and Virginia: An Introduction Chapter II: The Project of Censorship: Debating the Movies in 1920s Virginia Chapter III: Censorship in Black and White: The Struggle to Maintain Racial Hierarchies at the Movies, 1920s-1930s Chapter IV: The Cultural Politics of Race and the Cold War Chapter V: The Search for Sexual Deviance: Regulating and Contesting Depictions of Female Sexuality On-Screen Chapter VI: Conclusion: Island in the Sun and the Demise of the Censorship Board Postscript: Regulating Film in the Age of the Internet

Melissa Ooten is associate director of the WILL program and lecturer at the University of Richmond.

The growing scholarship of film censorship in America, and particularly, in the Jim Crow South sheds important light on the complex relationship between governance and popular culture. Melissa Ooten’s thorough study, Race, Gender, and Film Censorship in Virginia, 1922– 1965, is a welcome addition. . . .She convincingly argues that issues regarding not only race but also gender, sexuality, and class informed Virginia’s movie censorship. . . .Ooten’s examination of how discourses of race and gender informed Virginia’s censorship board is a vital contribution to understanding cinema and its exhibition in the Jim Crow South.

• Chapter I: Movie Censorship and Virginia: An Introduction Chapter II: The Project of Censorship: Debating the Movies in 1920s Virginia Chapter III: Censorship in Black and White: The Struggle to Maintain Racial Hierarchies at the Movies, 1920s-1930s Chapter IV: The Cultural Politics of Race and the Cold War Chapter V: The Search for Sexual Deviance: Regulating and Contesting Depictions of Female Sexuality On-Screen Chapter VI: Conclusion: Island in the Sun and the Demise of the Censorship Board Postscript: Regulating Film in the Age of the Internet