Fairy-Tale Films Beyond Disney

The fairy tale has become one of the dominant cultural forms and genres internationally, thanks in large part to its many manifestations on screen. Yet the history and relevance of the fairy-tale film have largely been neglected. In this follow-up to Jack Zipes’s award-winning book The Enchanted Screen (2011), Fairy-Tale Films Beyond Disney offers the first book-length multinational, multidisciplinary exploration of fairy-tale cinema. Bringing together twenty-three of the world’s top fairy-tale scholars to analyze the enormous scope of these films, Zipes and colleagues Pauline Greenhill and Kendra Magnus-Johnston present perspectives on film from every part of the globe, from Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, to Jan Švankmajer’s Alice, to the transnational adaptations of 1001 Nights and Hans Christian Andersen.

Contributors explore filmic traditions in each area not only from their different cultural backgrounds, but from a range of academic fields, including criminal justice studies, education, film studies, folkloristics, gender studies, and literary studies. Fairy-Tale Films Beyond Disney offers readers an opportunity to explore the intersections, disparities, historical and national contexts of its subject, and to further appreciate what has become an undeniably global phenomenon.

Author Biography

Jack Zipes is Professor Emeritus of German and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota. In addition to his scholarly work, he is an active storyteller in public schools and has worked with children’s theaters in Europe and the United States. Most recently he has published The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films (2010), The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of a Genre (2012), and Grimm Legacies: The Magic Power of the Grimms’ Folk and Fairy Tales (2014).

Pauline Greenhill is Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Her recent books are Channeling Wonder: Fairy Tales on Television (co-edited with Jill Terry Rudy, 2014); Unsettling Assumptions: Tradition, Gender, Drag (co-edited with Diane Tye, 2014); Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms (co-edited with Kay Turner, 2012); Fairy Tale Films: Visions of Ambiguity (co-edited with Sidney Eve Matrix, 2010); and Make the Night Hideous: Four English Canadian Charivaris, 1881-1940 (2010).

Kendra Magnus-Johnston is an Interdisciplinary Studies doctoral student at the University of Manitoba. She holds a masters degree in Cultural Studies and an undergraduate degree in Rhetoric and Communications from the University of Winnipeg. Apart from recent contributions to edited collections like Channeling Wonder and Unsettling Assumptions, her research can also be found in journals such as Marvels & Tales, Journal of Folklore Research, and Children’s Literature Association Quarterly.