The word 'cinematic' has been widely used to describe post-network dramatic television, and yet until recently, the term has been used with little conceptual rigor. Rashna Richards addresses this problem head-on, developing a sophisticated theory of intertextuality to argue that the cinematic in today's serial dramas operates via (often unintentional) echoes and reverberations from the cinema's archives. Richards then provides nuanced readings of the eruptions of the
cinematic in Mad Men, Dear White People, and a number of other series. The cinematic connections she finds are as surprising as they are enlightening.
Rashna Wadia Richards is Associate Professor and T. K. Young Chair of English at Rhodes College. She is the author of Cinematic Flashes: Cinephilia and Classical Hollywood (2013) and co-editor of For the Love of Cinema: Teaching Our Passion in and Outside the Classroom (2017).