Global Melodrama

Carla Marcantonio is an Associate Professor at Loyola Marymount University, USA.  Her articles and essays have been published in such journals as Social Text, Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory and Cineaste, as well as multiple edited books. She received her PhD in Cinema Studies from New York University and her MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

"Marcantonio's book is an innovative study of contemporary melodramatic forms that extend beyond national borders, gendered identities, and reigning expressions of sovereignty. She critically and closely focuses on exemplary film texts from Latin America, Europe, and Asia to track their treatments of imperilled and marginal bodies within a global milieu by updating neorealism to render the effects and affects of dislocation as substantial and perceptible." - Marcia Landy, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, English, Film, University of Pittsburgh, USA "Drawing on the work of globally feted auteurs such as Almodovar, Inarritu, and Wong Kar-wai, Marcantonio carefully updates theories of film melodrama for our times. She analyzes the recalibration of familiar melodramatic tropes and concerns - body and community, delay and chance, realism and excess - without losing sight of significant continuities and local contingencies. Exploring how the genre/mode helps us make sense of globalization's far-reaching reorganization of quotidian lifeworlds, this useful work posits a break in melodrama's historical evolution." - Bhaskar Sarkar, author of Mourning the Nation: Indian Cinema in the Wake of Partition

• Introduction: Global Melodrama 1. Biopolitical Embodiments: Talk to Her and The Skin I Live In 2. Costume Changes, Overlapping Histories: In the Mood for Love and 2046 3. Border-crossing the Global Imaginary: The Bubble and Babel 4. Melodrama and Global Neorealism: Colossal Youth and The World Conclusion: Of Gravity and Tears