Screen (journal)

Screen (journal)
Title	Screen
Discipline	Film studies; Film theory; Film history
Language	English
Editor	Peter Wollen (founding); now editorial collective
Publisher	Oxford University Press (current); originally Society for Education in Film and Television
Country	United Kingdom
History	1952–present
Frequency	Quarterly
Issn	0036-9543

Screen (journal)

Screen is a peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to scholarly research in Film theory, Film history, Television studies, and related areas of visual culture. Founded in the mid-20th century in the United Kingdom, it has been influential in developing theoretical approaches such as Marxist film theory, Psychoanalysis, Semiotics, and Cultural studies. The journal has published work by leading figures in film and media scholarship and has shaped debates around authorship, spectatorship, genre, and ideology in moving-image studies.

History

Screen was established in 1952 by the Society for Education in Film and Television amid postwar debates involving British Film Institute, Cinematheque, and educational reformers. In the 1960s and 1970s the journal became associated with the rise of structuralist and Marxist critique, publishing work that engaged with the intellectual milieu around Louis Althusser, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, E. P. Thompson and debates linked to the New Left Review. Contributors during this period included scholars and critics connected to Sight and Sound, Cahiers du Cinéma, Film Quarterly, New Left Review and the broader networks of European and North American film studies. The journal's editorial shifts mirrored institutional developments at University of Glasgow, University of Warwick, University of Birmingham, and later ties to publishers such as Oxford University Press and academic societies in the United Kingdom and internationally. In the 1980s and 1990s Screen fostered dialogue with the work of Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Friedrich Engels-influenced scholarship and emergent debates stimulated by scholars affiliated with Yale University, University of Chicago, Columbia University, and University of California, Los Angeles.

Scope and focus

Screen focuses on critical and theoretical approaches to moving-image media, engaging with texts, institutions, audiences and industrial contexts such as Hollywood, Bollywood, Nollywood, Soviet cinema, German Expressionism, French New Wave, Italian Neorealism, Japanese Cinema and television cultures across BBC, HBO, NHK and other broadcasters. The journal publishes work on authorship linked to figures like Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplin, Satyajit Ray, John Ford, David Lean and contemporary auteurs such as Pedro Almodóvar, Hayao Miyazaki, Agnes Varda, Wong Kar-wai, Spike Lee and Greta Gerwig. It addresses genre studies—linking to traditions like Western (genre), Film noir, Musical film, Horror film—and theoretical frameworks deriving from Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Structuralism, Post-structuralism, Feminist theory, Queer theory, and Postcolonialism as developed by thinkers including Antonio Gramsci, Simone de Beauvoir, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Judith Butler, bell hooks and Homi K. Bhabha.

Publication and editorial information

Screen appears quarterly under the imprint of Oxford University Press and operates a peer-review process administered by an international editorial board drawing members from institutions such as University of London, University of Warwick, New York University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Toronto and University of Sydney. Past editors include scholars linked to Peter Wollen, Colin MacCabe, Laura Mulvey, Stephen Heath and editorial collectives associated with film departments at University of Exeter, University of Sussex and University of Birmingham. The journal accepts original research articles, historiographical essays, theoretical interventions, review essays and commissioned special issues; submission guidelines and editorial policies reflect standards promoted by bodies such as the Modern Language Association and the British Academy.

Abstracting and indexing

Screen is indexed in major bibliographic and citation services including Web of Science, Scopus, MLA International Bibliography, JSTOR and subject-specific indexes used by scholars at institutions like Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University and Stanford University. Its inclusion in these databases facilitates citation tracking, impact assessment and discovery across library consortia such as OCLC, JSTOR collections and national bibliographies in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia and parts of Europe.

Reception and impact

Screen is widely cited and has been central to establishing film studies as an academic field, influencing curricula at departments including UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, King's College London, University of Warwick and University of Edinburgh. Its articles have shaped scholarly debates engaged by prize-awarded monographs from presses like Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Routledge, Methuen, Verso Books and University of California Press. The journal's theoretical interventions have been invoked in interdisciplinary work across Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, Media Studies programs and in exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, British Film Institute National Archive, Tate Modern and film festivals including the Cannes Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival and Venice Film Festival.

Notable articles and special issues

Screen has published landmark articles and themed issues that provoked sustained debate—for example pieces addressing Auteur theory debates connected to Andrew Sarris and François Truffaut, feminist interventions linked to Laura Mulvey and the concept of the male gaze, psychoanalytic readings drawing on Jacques Lacan and Sigmund Freud, Marxist critiques referencing Karl Marx and Antonio Gramsci, and postcolonial critiques invoking Edward Said and Homi K. Bhabha. Special issues have focused on topics such as Sound studies, Censorship and film policy in relation to British Board of Film Classification, technologies of digital cinema tied to Digital Revolution, and archival research connected to collections at British Film Institute and Cinémathèque Française. Individual articles from the journal continue to be reprinted, anthologized and taught across syllabi at institutions including Columbia University, University of Oxford and University of Chicago.

Category:Film studies journals