Explorers on Screen

Adventure! Danger! Romance!

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Edited by Sue Matheson and Cynthia J. Miller

Type

Studies

Subject

Genre > Adventures

Keywords

adventures, characters, representation, danger, romance

Publishing date

2026 (June 30, 2026)

Publisher

Edinburgh University Press

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 344 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-3995-3205-1

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Book Presentation:
Explorers on Screen: Adventure! Danger! Romance! brings together essays that break new ground on films featuring explorers and adventurers from the Age of Exploration to the present. It focuses on fictional and dramatized representations, rather than biopics, as these create the most interesting reflections of the attitudes, ideals, aspirations and tensions at work in their eras of production and reception.

It provides readers with the conceptual tools to more deeply consider the portrayals of these characters, both fictional and real, and the ways in which they shape and reflect key historical figures and moments. The volume’s essays offer interdisciplinary approaches from film studies, history, anthropology, philosophy and literature to bring fresh and complex perspectives to each chapter and the volume as a whole.

About the authors:
Sue Mathesonis Full Professor of English at the University College of the North in Manitoba, Canada. Her interests in film, culture, and literature may be found in more than sixty articles published in a wide range of books and scholarly journals. She is the editor of Love in Western Film and Television: Happy Hearts and Lonely Trails, A Fistful of Icons: Essays on Frontier Fixtures of the American Western, Women in the Western and The Good, the Bad and the Ancient: Essays on the Greco-Roman Influence in Westerns. She is the author of The Westerns and War Films of John Ford and The John Ford Encyclopedia.Cynthia J. Miller is a cultural anthropologist specializing in visual media. She teaches in the Marlboro Institute for Liberal Arts at Emerson College, and is the editor or co-editor of twenty scholarly volumes, including Journeys Into Terror: Essays from the Cinematic Intersection of Travel and Horror (2023), as well as the author of dozens of articles in journals and edited scholarly volumes. Cynthia is the recipient of the Peter C. Rollins prize for a book-length work in popular culture, and the James Welsh prize for lifetime achievement in adaptation studies.

Press Reviews:
This well-curated collection, covering the gamut of screen history from the silent era to the present, gets to the heart of what an explorer is. As they journey to new physical, psychological and cultural territories, these explorers find acceptance or ostracism, representative of their perceived roles as saviours, helpmates or cultural imperialists. Until now, their cinematic portrayals have received scant scholarly attention, but this volume gives them their due, reminding viewers not only of their exciting, gripping experiences but also of the complicated, often controversial, issues that they represent. ― Kathy Merlock Jackson, Virginia Wesleyan University

See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press