Anna Siomopoulos is Associate Professor of English and Media Studies at Bentley University.

This book argues that Hollywood melodramas of the Depression era engaged the political ideas underlying the welfare state policies of the New Deal. These ideas expanded the boundaries of the public realm and the purview of the government, such as liberal empathy, consumer citizenship, the refeudalization of the state, and minimal economic redistribution.

Selected Contents: Introduction: "Public Daydreams" and the New Deal 1. Scarface Over the White House: The New Deal and the Political Gangster Film 2. "With Every Step and Every Breath I Took": Mass Culture, Embodied Citizenship and the Mob Violence Film of the 1930s 3. "I Didn't Know Anyone Could Be So Unselfish": The Welfare State, Consumer Citizenship and King Vidor's Stella Dallas 4. "I Know I Done Wrong: I've Done Repent": Black Nationalism, the New Deal and The Emperor Jones 5. The Doubleness of "Indemnity": The Welfare State and 1940s Insurance Noir Conclusion: Towards a Political Theory of Melodrama