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Podcast: New Books in Popular Culture
Episode: Justin Owen Rawlins, "Imagining the Method: Reception, Identity, and American Screen Performance" (U Texas Press, 2024)
Description: Only one performance style has dominated the lexicon of the casual moviegoer: âMethod acting.â The first reception-based analysis of film acting, Imagining the Method: Reception, Identity, and American Screen Performance (U Texas Press, 2024) investigates how popular understandings of the so-called Methodâwhat its author Justin Rawlins calls "methodness"âcreated an exclusive brand for white, male actors while associating such actors with rebellion and marginalization. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book maps the forces giving shape to methodness and policing its boundaries.Imagining the Method traces the primordial conditions under which the Method was conceived. It explores John Garfiel...