In this book, Michael J. Shapiro stages a series of pedagogical encounters between political theory, represented as a compositional challenge, and cinematic texts, emphasizing how to achieve an effective research paper/essay by heeding the compositional strategies of films.

Michael J. Shapiro is Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa. Among his recent publications are Politics and Time: Documenting the Event (2016); Deforming American Political Thought, 2nd edition (Routledge, 2016); The Political Sublime (2018); and Punctuations: How the Arts Think the Political (2019). In 2021, he received the 2018-2020 Pamela Grande Jensen Award for the Best Book in Politics, Literature, and Film.

1 Extracting Political Theory From Lars von Trier: Conceptual Interferences With His The Element of Crime

2 Toward a Critical Assessment of "Now-Time": Contrasting Hoop Dreams With Kubrick's Barry Lyndon

3 Resituating Hiroshima

4 "The Light of Reason"

5 "Borderline Justice"

6 A Bi-City Cinematic Experience

7 The Phenomenology of the Cinema Experience

Afterword: The Phenomenology of Watching and Writing