| List of Figures and Sources | |
| Preface | |
| Pt. 1 | Theoretical Concerns | 1 |
| Ch. 1 | The Use-Value of Reception Studies | 3 |
| Ch. 2 | Reception Studies in Other Disciplines | 16 |
| Ch. 3 | Reception Studies in Film and Television | 49 |
| Ch. 4 | Toward a Historical Materialist Approach to Reception Studies | 79 |
| Pt. 2 | Studies in the History of the Reception of American Films | 99 |
| Ch. 5 | Rethinking "Primitive" Cinema: Intertextuality, the Middle-Class Audience, and Reception Studies | 101 |
| Ch. 6 | "The Handmaiden of Villainy": Foolish Wives, Politics, Gender Orientation, and the Other | 124 |
| Ch. 7 | The Birth of a Nation: Reconsidering Its Reception | 139 |
| Ch. 8 | The Logic of Alternative Readings: A Star Is Born | 154 |
| Ch. 9 | With the Compliments of the Auteur: Art Cinema and the Complexities of Its Reading Strategies | 178 |
| Ch. 10 | Chameleon in the Film, Chameleons in the Audience; or, Where Is Parody? The Case of Zelig | 196 |
| Epilogue | 210 |
| Notes | 213 |
| Select Bibliography | 259 |
| Index | 271 |
