Featured Books

Explore my authored books and edited collections, which examine the diverse ways cinema influences our understanding of the world.

Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion

This edited collection explores the emotional power of cinema, examining how films elicit specific emotions through narrative, music, and cinematic techniques, while offering a cognitive perspective on the connection between genre, emotion, and spectator engagement.

Learn more

Screen Stories and Moral Understanding: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

This edited collection examines how screen narratives—movies, streamed series, and television—can deepen moral understanding by examining their cognitive, emotional, and philosophical impact on viewers through an interdisciplinary lens.

Learn more

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film

This edited collection investigates key themes, thinkers, and issues in philosophy and film, featuring international scholars on topics like narrative, ethics, genre, and the relationship between film and philosophy.

Learn more

Quick Takes Movies & Popular Culture: Alternative Realities

This book explores the interplay between cinematic fantasy and filmic realism, analyzing how films blur the lines between the fantastical and the everyday to evoke emotional and social truths.

Learn more

Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film

This book examines the theoretical foundations of documentary film, addressing issues of objectivity, truth-telling, and the distinction between fiction and nonfiction through a critical realist perspective.


Revised second edition in preparation with University of Wisconsin Press.

Learn more

Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator's Experience

This book investigates the emotional power of cinema, exploring the psychology of spectatorship, the paradox of negative emotions, and the cultural significance of mainstream Hollywood narratives.

Learn more

Screen Stories: Emotion and the Ethics of Engagement

This book explores the ethical impact of screen stories, arguing that the emotional power of media significantly influences both personal and cultural wellbeing, necessitating a more ethical approach to media criticism.

Learn more

Featured Publications

Explore my scholarly contributions on documentary, emotion, ethics, and film theory through books, papers, and chapters.

“Mood and Atmosphere in Narrative Film: A Cognitive/Phenomenological Account," in The Oxford Handbook of Moving Image Atmospheres, eds. Steffen Hven and Daniel Yacavone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
"The Rhetoric of Empathy in Narrative Film," in Empathy and the Aesthetic Mind: Perspectives on Fiction and Beyond, eds. Katerina Bantinaki, Efi Kyprianidou, and Fotini Vassiliou (London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming).
“Film,” in James Harold, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Art and Ethics. Oxford University Press, 2023. Link
“Ethics and Bad Protagonists in Serial Television Drama,” in Hector Lopez and Ted Nannicelli, eds., Cognition, Emotion, and Aesthetics in Contemporary Serial Television (New York: Routledge, 2023). Link
“Eight Theses on Emotion and Cinema,” in Carlos A. Belmonte Grey and Álvaro A. Fernández, eds., El Paraíso De Las Emociones: Teoría, Producción y Contextos de la Experiencia Fílmica. Valencia: Tirant Humanidades, 2022, 23-49. Link
“Screen Stories as ‘Imaginative Ecology’: A Thought Experiment,” in Mette Hjort and Ted Nannicelli, eds., A Companion to Motion Pictures and Public Value (Wiley Blackwell, 2022). Link
“Collective Memory and the Rhetorical Power of the Historical Fiction Film,” Global Storytelling: Journal of Digital and Moving Images, 1, 1 (Summer 2021). Link
Alternative Realities. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2020. Link
“Putting Cognition in its Place: Affect and the Experience of Narrative Film,” in Katherine Thomson-Jones, ed. Current Controversies in the Philosophy of Film. New York: Routledge, 2019. Link
“Cognitive Theory of the Moving Image,” in Noël Carroll, Laura T. Di Summa-Knoop, and Shawn Loht, eds. The Palgrave Handbook for the Philosophy of Film and Motion Picture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, 381-408. Link
“Fascist Affect in 300.” Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind 13, 2 (2019): 20-37. Full article available here: Link
“Brecht, Emotion, and the Reflective Spectator: The Case of BlacKkKlansman.” NECSUS_European Journal of Media Studies, Spring 2019. Full article available here: Link
“Ethical Criticism and Fictional Characters as Moral Agents,” in Johannes Riis and Aaron Taylor, eds. Screening Characters. New York: Routledge, 2019, 191-208. Link
“Characterization and Character Engagement in the Documentary,” in Catalyn Brylla and Mette Kramer, eds. Cognitive Theory and Documentary Film. New York: Palgrave, 2018, 115-134. Link
Screen Stories: Emotion and the Ethics of Engagement. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Link
“The Limits of Appropriation: Problems with Subjectivist Theories of Nonfiction Film,” in Ib Bondebjerg, ed.  Moving Images, Culture, and the Mind. University of Luton Press, 2000. Reprinted in In David LaRocca, ed., The Philosophy of Documentary Film, 113-124. Ed. David LaRocca. Lexington Books: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016. Link
“Spectator Emotion and Ideological Film Criticism,” in Richard Allen and Murray Smith, eds. Film Theory and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Reprinted in Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 8th ed., eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Reprinted in The Philosophy of Film, eds. Thomas E. Wartenberg and Angela Curran. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. Link
“Facing Others: Close-ups of Faces in Narrative Film and in The Silence of the Lambs,” in Lisa Zunshine, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, 291-312. Link
“Mood and Ethics in Narrative Film,” in Ted Nanicelli and Paul Taberham, eds. Cognitive Media Theory. New York and London: Routledge, 2014, 141-157. Link
“‘I’ll Believe it When I Trust the Source’: Documentary Images and Visual Evidence,” in Brian Winston, ed. The Documentary Handbook, British Film Institute, 2013. Link
“The Affective Power of Movies,” in A. P. Shimamura, ed. Psychocinematics: Exploring Cognition at the Movies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013, 94-111. Link
“Art Moods and Human Moods in Narrative Cinema.” New Literary History 43, 3 (Summer 2012): 455-475. Link
“Folk Psychology for Film Critics and Scholars.” Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, 5, 2 (Winter 2011): 26-50. Link
“Affective Incongruity and The Thin Red Line.” Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind 4, 2 (2010): 86-103. Full article available here: Link
“’I Followed the Rules, and They All Loved You More’: Moral Judgment and Attitudes Toward Fictional Characters in Film.” Midwest Journal of Philosophy, 34, 1 (September 2010): 34-51. Link
“Trauma, Pleasure, and Emotion in the Viewing of Titanic: A Cognitive Approach,” in Warren Buckland, ed. Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies. New York: Routledge, 2009. Link
Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator’s Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Link
“Frame Shifters: Surprise Endings and Spectator Imagination in The Twilight Zone,” in Noël Carroll and Lester Hunt, eds. The Philosophy of The Twilight Zone. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Link
“The Philosophy of Errol Morris,” in Bill Rothman, ed. Three Documentary Filmmakers: Errol Morris, Ross McElwee, Jean Rouch. SUNY Press, 2009. Link
The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. Co-editor with Paisley Livingston. New York and London: Routledge, 2008. Trans. Arabic 2012. Link
“Documentary,” in Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga, eds. The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. New York: Routledge, 2008: 494-504.
“Emotion and Affect,” In The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film: 86-96. Link
“Synästhetische Affekte: Szenarios von Schuld und Scham in Hitchcocks Filmen”(“Synesthetic Affect: Scenarios of Guilt and Shame in Hitchcock’s Films”), in Anne Bartsch, Jens Eder, and Kathrin Fahlenbrach, eds. Audiovisuelle Emotionen (Audiovisual Emotions). Trans. Kathrin Fahlenbrach. Köln: Herbert von Halem, 2007. Link
“Cognitive Theory in Film Studies: Three Recent Books.” (On Noël Carroll’s Engaging the Moving Image, Greg M. Smith’s Film Structure and the Emotion System, and Per Persson’s Understanding Cinema: A Psychological Theory) College Literature 33, 1 (Winter 2006): 215-224.
“Disgusted at the Movies: An Essay on Film and Emotion.” Film Studies: An International Review 8 (Summer 2006): 81-92. Link
“The 1980s and American Documentary,” in Linda Ruth Williams and Michael Hammond, eds. American Cinema Since 1960. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006. Link
“What a Documentary Is, After All.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Arts Criticism 63, 2 (Spring 2005): 105-117. Reprinted in Julian Stallabrass, ed., Documentary (London and Cambridge, MA: Whitechapel Gallery and the MIT Press, 2013): 52-62. Link
Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion. Co-editor with Greg M. Smith. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Trans. Korean 2014. Link
“The Scene of Empathy and the Human Face on Film,” in Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith, eds. Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.
“American Documentary in the 1980s,” in Stephen Prince, ed. and author. A New Pot of Gold: Hollywood Under the Electronic Rainbow, 1980-1989. Vol. 10 of the History of American Cinema series. New York: Scribners, 1999. Link
“Spectacles of Death: Clint Eastwood and Violence in Unforgiven.” Cinema Journal, 37, 2 (Winter 1998), 65-83. Link
“Power, Gender, and a Cucumber: Satirizing Masculinity in This is Spinal Tap,” in Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski, eds. Documenting the Documentary. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998. Reprinted in Music: The Film Reader, edited by Kay Dickinson. New York: Routledge, 2003. Link
**Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Chapbook Press, 2010. Trans. Spanish 2014 and Chinese 2022. Link
“Moving Pictures and the Rhetoric of Nonfiction Film: Two Approaches,” in David Bordwell and Noël Carroll, eds. Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. Link
“Blurry Boundaries, Troublesome Typologies, and the Unruly Nonfiction Film.” (On Bill Nichols’ Representing Reality). Semiotica 98, 3/4 (1994): 387-396. Link
“Film Theory and Aesthetics: Notes on a Schism.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51, 3 (Summer 1993): 445-454.
See more

Featured Media

Discover media features highlighting my expertise in film theory, emotion, and the ethical and cultural influence of cinema through articles, interviews, and discussions.

Why & How Dr. Carl Plantinga, Calvin University Senior Research Fellow, Is Helping To Change Our World

Read the article

Calvin University Receives $1 Million Grant for Research on Movies' Impact on Morals

Read the article

What Do the Oscars Best Picture Choices Tell Us About the World We Live In?

Read the article

The Reflective Afterlife of Movies for College Classroom Discussions

Read the article