Stephen Prince

Professor of Communication

Virginia Tech

Blacksburg, VA 24061

540-231-5044

Stephen Prince has taught film history, criticism and theory at Virginia Tech for 18 years. His research and publications focus on violence in motion pictures, on Japanese director Akira Kurosawa and Japanese cinema, on the American film industry, on American film during the 1980s, and on

political cinema. The author of numerous essays and book chapters, his work has appeared in Film Quarterly, Cinema Journal, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

He currently is the Past President of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, the world’s largest organization of film scholars, academics, students and professionals.

His audio commentaries have appeared on the DVDs of films by directors Akira Kurosawa and Sam Peckinpah.

To date, Prince has published ten books. (Full list of pubs)

American Cinema of the 1980s: Themes and Variations (Rutgers University Press, 2007) examines American film during this key period when the industry reinvented itself for the age of video.

Movies and Meaning: An Introduction to Film (Allyn and Bacon, 2007) has just been published in its fourth edition. This textbook for introductory film classes examines cinema as an art, as a business, and covers topics in film criticism and film theory. Movies and Meaning is a widely praised introductory text.

Classical Film Violence: Designing and Regulating Brutality in Hollywood Cinema, 1930-1968 (Rutgers, 2003) examines movie violence during the classical Hollywood era, how filmmakers designed it and how censors regulated it. This is the first book to examine the relationship between the aesthetics and censorship of film violence during the Hollywood studio era.

The Horror Film (Rutgers, 2004) is an anthology of essays that examine the history of the horror film and the psychological reasons for its persistent appeal.

The Warrior's Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa (Princeton, 1999, Chinese-language edition 1995), analyzes the films of this world-famous Japanese director, whose works (Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Yojimbo, Ran) have been a major influence on filmmakers throughout the world and especially on American directors, such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Originally published in 1991, the book has been revised and expanded so that it now covers Kurosawa's entire career and assesses his place in cinema history.

A New Pot of Gold: Hollywood Under the Electronic Rainbow (Scribner's, 2000) is a comprehensive history of American film in the 1980s, covering the business, art, technology and social politics of filmmaking in that decade, when VCRs, cable television and global communications empires changed the nature of Hollywood.

Screening Violence (Rutgers University Press, 2000) examines the history, aesthetics and effects of movie violence with reference to current controversies over graphic ultraviolence.

Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies (University of Texas Press, 1998) examines the turn toward graphic violence in modern cinema and in the work of Sam Peckinpah, the director most identified with screen violence and whose films include The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs.

Peckinpah's most famous film is The Wild Bunch, and Prince's Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (Cambridge University Press, 1999) provides a close look at this classic Western.

Visions of Empire: Political Imagery in Contemporary American Film (Praeger, 1992) examines social themes in 1980s filmmaking, ranging from Rambo and Top Gun to Platoon, Robocop, and Total Recall.