[Commlist] New book: Mental Illness and Narrative Complexity

New book: Mental Illness and Narrative Complexity


Melanie Kreitler is very pleased to announce that the monograph Mental 
Illness and Narrative Complexity: An Experiential Approach to Puzzle 
Films and Complex Television (2025) is now available at Edinburgh 
University Press. Please find the back matter text below along with 
testimonials and a link to further details.


Mainstream media’s relationship with mental illness is fraught. Deemed 
to misrepresent and sensationalise non-normative mental states, 
productions are said to solidify harmful attitudes in their audiences. 
Over the past two decades, puzzle films and complex TV shows have broken 
with time-honoured tropes of mental illness, offering alternative ways 
of visualising and narrating non-normative mental states. Bringing 
together cognitive media studies, narrative theory and cultural studies, 
Melanie Kreitler explores the synergy between complex narrative 
structures and representations of mental illness. Focusing on US 
American films and TV shows since the mid-1990s, the book shows how 
complex productions strategically use their narrative structures to 
evoke in viewers an experience similar to that of the 
neuro-non-normative protagonist. Moving beyond the formal 
characteristics and cognitive effects of narrative complexity, this book 
argues for the cultural impact that puzzle films and complex television 
can have on our understanding of mental illness on and off screens.


*Testimonials*

'This timely book not only identifies and thoroughly theorizes a 
productive nexus between mental illness and narrative complexity in 
contemporary film and television, but it also mobilizes its emerging 
insights to argue for the positive—de-stigmatizing—impacts that engaging 
with this new breed of perplexing fictions featuring mentally ill 
characters has on viewers.' (Miklós Kiss, Associate Professor of 
Audiovisual Arts and Cognition, University of Groningen)

'Melanie Kreitler's book stages an important intervention in debates on 
narrative complexity. It shows convincingly how complex form is not only 
a source of attractive puzzlement but a tool of serious cognitive and 
even phenomenological exploration of mental illness. Developing this 
argument through a series of case studies drawn from contemporary film 
and TV, Kreitler overturns assumptions about cognitive approaches to 
media by demonstrating how cognitive and social meaning-making can work 
in tandem.' (Marco Caracciolo, Associate Professor of English, Ghent 
University)


Further information can be found here and please use the 30% discount 
code 'NEW30':
https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-mental-illness-and-narrative-complexity.html




---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ commlist.org)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------