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Podcast: New Books in Popular Culture
Episode: Pamela Robertson Wojcik, "Unhomed: Cycles of Mobility and Placelessness in American Cinema" (U California Press, 2024)
Description: In Unhomed: Cycles of Mobility and Placelessness in American Cinema (University of California Press, 2024), Dr. Pamela Roberston Wojcik examines America's ambivalent and shifting attitude toward homelessness. She considers film cycles from five distinct historical moments that show characters who are unhomed and placeless, mobile rather than fixed—characters who fail, resist, or opt out of the mandate for a home of one's own.From the tramp films of the silent era to the 2021 Oscar-winning Nomadland, Dr. Wojcik reveals a tension in the American imaginary between viewing homelessness as deviant and threatening or emblematic of freedom and independence. Blen...