What is history? How do we represent it? How do our notions of history change over time? The essays in The Historical Film: History and Memory in Media probe the roles that cinema and television play in altering and complicating our understanding of historical events.

The book brings together representative examples of how both media critics and historians write about history as it is created and disseminated through film and television. The essays explore what is at stake culturally and politically in media history and how this form of history-making is different from...

One of the most innovative comedic programs to air on television, Monty Python's Flying Circus was a mix of the carnivalesque and the critical. The show has become famous for eschewing many of the conventions of situation comedy, the fully formed and coherent script, narrative closure, predictable characters, and the decorum associated with presentation. Its curious transatlantic popularity defied the assumption that comedy is regional and exclusive, and the show's cult status still lives on in the United States and United Kingdom through reruns, videos, DVDs, and continual reappearances...