Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television
Title	Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television
Discipline	Media history, Communication history
Abbreviation	Hist. J. Film Radio Telev.
Publisher	Routledge
Country	United Kingdom
Frequency	Quarterly
History	1980–present
Issn	0143-9685

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes research on the historical study of audiovisual media, broadly encompassing film, radio, television, and related technologies. Founded in the late 20th century, the journal has featured scholarship connecting archival research, cultural history, and media institutions across national contexts such as the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Japan, China, India, and Brazil. Its pages have hosted work engaging figures and events ranging from D. W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin to Orson Welles, Walt Disney, Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Alfred Hitchcock, Elia Kazan, Ingmar Bergman, Satyajit Ray, Luchino Visconti, Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Fritz Lang, Robert Bresson, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Audrey Hepburn, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Bertolt Brecht, Henri Langlois, Carl Laemmle, Louis B. Mayer, Adolph Zukor, Irving Thalberg, RCA, BBC, NBC, CBS, Warner Bros., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Cinerama, Technicolor, Vitascope, Phonofilm, Vitaphone, Magna Carta, Treaty of Versailles, Cold War, McCarthyism, Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam War, Soviet Union, Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, French New Wave, Italian Neorealism, Japanese New Wave, Hollywood Blacklist, Hays Code, Television Act 1954, Communist Party of the Soviet Union, National Film Board of Canada, Cannes Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Academy Awards, César Award, BAFTA Award.

History and founding

The journal was established in 1980 amid scholarly growth in media history studies, with founding editors drawn from institutions such as University of Oxford, Stanford University, University of California, Los Angeles, University of London, University of Cambridge, Columbia University, New York University, University of Chicago, Yale University, Harvard University, London School of Economics, University of Melbourne, McGill University, and University of Toronto. Its inception paralleled institutional developments like the creation of archives such as the British Film Institute, Library of Congress, Cinémathèque Française, Deutsche Kinemathek, Gosfilmofond of Russia, National Film Archive of India, and research programs at Smithsonian Institution, Getty Research Institute, and Paley Center for Media. Early editorial aims referenced debates involving Victor Hugo, Walter Benjamin, Adorno and Horkheimer, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, and Siegfried Kracauer.

Scope and discipline

The journal’s remit covers historical analysis of audiovisual production, circulation, reception, and regulation, engaging primary materials from studios, broadcasters, censorship boards, and archives like British Board of Film Classification, Federal Communications Commission, Office of War Information, Ministry of Information (United Kingdom), Lusitania, Enigma, Sputnik in contextual studies. Articles often intersect with scholarship on figures such as Marshall McLuhan, Noam Chomsky, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Pierre Bourdieu, Antonio Gramsci, Frantz Fanon, Stalin, Lenin, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi while situating media artifacts from Citizen Kane, Metropolis, Battleship Potemkin, Bicycle Thieves, Rashomon, The Godfather, Star Wars, Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Modern Times, The Great Dictator, The Jazz Singer, Singin' in the Rain.

Editorial structure and publication details

Published quarterly by Routledge and part of the Taylor & Francis group, the journal is overseen by an international editorial board drawn from universities including University of Southern California, Northwestern University, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Brown University, University of Pennsylvania, King's College London, Australian National University, and University of São Paulo. Peer review follows standard double-blind procedures involving reviewers at institutions such as Princeton University, Duke University, Indiana University Bloomington, University of Texas at Austin, University of California, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University and archival partners like National Archives (UK), National Archives and Records Administration, Bibliothèque nationale de France. Special issues have been guest-edited by scholars affiliated with École Normale Supérieure, Sciences Po, Freie Universität Berlin, Hokkaido University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Abstracting and indexing

The journal is indexed in major databases and citation services including Scopus, Web of Science, JSTOR, ProQuest, EBSCOhost, Google Scholar, Project MUSE, and library catalogs of Library of Congress, British Library, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, National Diet Library (Japan), National Library of Australia, facilitating discovery for researchers working on topics tied to archives like Imperial War Museums and institutions such as European Broadcasting Union.

Notable articles and special issues

Notable contributions have examined propaganda and film in contexts like Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, Italian Fascism, Imperial Japan, British Empire, and French colonialism, with landmark articles addressing events such as D-Day, Spanish Civil War, Russian Revolution, May 1968, Prague Spring, Partition of India, Cuban Missile Crisis, Watergate scandal, Iranian Revolution. Special issues have focused on the silent film era, the transition to sound film, the rise of television broadcasting in the postwar period, and digital retrospectives on streaming platforms tied to companies such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu.

Reception and impact

Scholars in film studies, media studies, communication studies, history departments, and cultural studies have cited the journal in monographs and edited volumes by university presses including Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, University of California Press, Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan, Columbia University Press, Princeton University Press. Its articles have informed curatorial programming at Tate Modern, Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, and festival retrospectives at Locarno Film Festival, SXSW, Telluride Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival. Citation metrics in Scopus and Web of Science reflect its standing within interdisciplinary media history.

Access and availability

Back issues are available via aggregator platforms maintained by Taylor & Francis Online and archival repositories such as JSTOR and institutional subscriptions through university libraries like University of Michigan, University of British Columbia, McMaster University, University of Cape Town, Universidade de Lisboa. Individual articles can be obtained via interlibrary loan services at institutions such as British Library and document delivery through the National Library of Medicine and scholarly sharing networks.

Category:Media history journals Category:Academic journals established in 1980