Introduction / Christine Gledhill, Laura Horak, and Elisabeth R. Ander 1 Part I. Provocations 1. The Fortunes of Melodrama in France and America; or, Why Melodrama Is Still Important / Linda Williams 15 Part II. Refiguring Melodrama's Histories as Transnational/Transmedial Form 2. On Shifting Ground: Melodrama's Transcultural, Transmedial, and Transhistorical Genesis / Matthew Buckley 65 3. Hollywood's Export to the World: Melodramas of Colonial Conquest / Jane M. Gaines 81 4.

Feeling Our Way: Melodrama and Emotional Engagement / E. Deidre Pribram 101 5. Strip Thinking: Forms of Intermittent Pictorialization / Carolyn Williams 119 6. "And We Wept, Precious": Motion Capture and Melodrama / Carla Marcantonio 137 Part III. Melodrama's Fortunes in France and America: Eighteenth to Twenty-First Century 7. Seeking Sisterhood: French Melodrama, American Cinema, and the Case of Les deux orphelines / Victoria Duckett 151 8. Searching for Melodrama in French Versus American Cinema, 1908-1912 / Richard Abel 168 9. The Lost World: Le Silence est d'or ; or, French (Mis)Recognition of a Mélodrame That Dares Not Speak Its Name / Charles-Antoine Courcoux 182 10.

"Grab 'Em by the Pussy": Donald Trump and the MAGA Melodrama / Elisabeth R. Anker 201 11. Trans Melodramas / Laura Horak 219 Part IV. Aesthetics and Politics of Emotion 12. Falling in Love and in Art: The Diva Documentary / Dolores McElroy 243 13. Melodrama as Default Mode of Popular Culture: P!nk's Album Trustfall (2023) / Martin Shingler 260 14. Emotional Legibility: Modernity, Melodrama, and Ambivalent Gender Justice in Bombay Cinema, 1930s-1950s / Ira Bhaskar 272 15. From My Sister's Bedside: Life and Death in the Shadow of Blossoms Shanghai / Zhang Zhen 293 Acknowledgments 311 Contributors 313 Index 317.