If It Bleeds Predator Documentary

Visions of Invasion

Visions of Invasion: Alien Affects, Cinema, and Citizenship in Settler Colonies explores how the US government mobilizes media and surveillance technologies to operate a highly networked, multidimensional system for controlling migrants. Author Michael Lechuga focuses on three arenas where a citizenship control assemblage manufactures alienhood: Hollywood extraterrestrial invasion film, federal antimigration and border security legislation, and various immigration enforcement protocols implemented along the Mexico–United States border. Building on rhetorical studies, settler colonial studies, and media studies, Visions of Invasion offers a glimpse at how the processes of alien-making contribute to an ongoing settler colonial project in the US. Lechuga demonstrates that popular films—The War of the Worlds, Predator, Men in Black, and more—participate in the production of migrants as subjective terrorists, felons, and other noncitizen personae vilified in public discourse. Beyond just tracing how alien invasion narratives circulate in popular media, Lechuga describes how the logics motivating early US colonists materialize in both the US’s citizenship control policy and in some of the country’s most popular texts. Beneath each of the film franchises and antimigrant political expressions described in Visions of Invasion lies an anxious colonial logic in which the settler way of life is seemingly threated by false narratives of imminent invasion from abroad. The volume offers a deep dive into how the rhetorical figure of the alien has been manufactured as a political subjectivity, one that plays out the anxieties, guilts, and fears of colonialism in today’s science fiction landscape.

Criminal (In)Justice

"Criminal (In)Justice presents an overview of the criminal justice system from the angle of critical criminology instead of the traditional ‘this is who we are and this is what we do’ approach. This book makes students ask why the system is what it is and why it does what it does—and what are the results of those actions." -Milton C. Hill, Stephen F. Austin State University Criminal (In)Justice: A Critical Introduction takes an unflinching look at the American criminal justice system and the social forces that affect the implementation of justice. Author Aaron Fichtelberg uses a unique, critical perspective to introduce students to criminal justice and encourages them to look closer at the intersection of race, class, gender, and inequality in the criminal justice system. Covering each of the foundational areas of the criminal justice system—policing, courts, and corrections—this book takes an in-depth look at the influence of inequality, making it ideal for instructors who want students to critically assess and understand the American criminal justice system.

Film Review