In a recent issue of Critical Inquiry, Richard Gruisin reviews Screening Fears: On Protective Media by Francesco Casetti. Click here to learn more about the book. Click here to read the full review. An excerpt

“Screening Fears is a powerful and provocative book that provides an innovative framework for thinking about continuities of technical mediation across history. In addition to providing new insights into the operations of screenic media, it creates in this reader a desire to see the projection/protection complex extended to other media and concepts. When I was reading it, I wondered about the Burkean and Kantian sublime in relation to the phantasmagoria, Frederick Law Olmsted’s logic of recreation in Central Park as a precursor of the cinema, or the operation of social media to create bubbles of fear, not comfort. Others will undoubtedly find analogues of their own. But isn’t that what we expect any generative new concept to do?”