Synopses & Reviews
Feminist theory has been at the forefront of critical analysis for more than two decades. With dazzling insight, Maggie Humm highlights and explains feminist issues and offers a fascinating array of original film analyses. Feminism and Film is the first book to apply such a broad range of theory to contemporary film.
Humm begins with an in-depth historical survey of contemporary feminist theory, visual aesthetics and film theory, with a particular focus on the work of Laura Mulvey, Annette Kuhn, E. Ann Kaplan and bell hooks. Subsequent chapters examine the most pressing questions posed by feminism about reproduction, pornography and the gaze, autobiography and literary theory, postmodernism, Black feminism and "the personal is political" in relation to a variety of mainstream and independent films, including Klute, Dead Ringers, A Question of Silence, Orlando and Daughters of the Dust.
Description
Filmography: p. 218-225. Includes bibliographical references (p. 200-217) and index.
About the Author
Maggie Humm is Professor of Women's Studies at the University of East London and author of nine books including Border Traffic: Strategies of Contemporary Women Writers, The Dictionary of Feminist Theory, A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Feminist Literary Criticism, and Practicing Feminist Criticism.
Table of Contents
Part One
1. Feminist Theory, Aesthetics and Film Theory
2. Sight and Sound: Pornography and the Gaze
3. Cronenberg's Films and Feminist Theories of Mothering
4. Author/Auteur: Feminist Theory and Feminist Films
Part Two
5. Black Feminisms
6. Postmodernism and Orlaist Theory
Afterword
Bibliography
Index