Synopses & Reviews
For the past twenty-five years, cinema has been a vital terrain on which feminist debates about culture, representation, and identity have been fought. This anthology charts the history of those debates, bringing together the key, classic essays in feminist film theory.
Feminist Film Theory maps the impact of major theoretical developments on this growing field-from structuralism and psychoanalysis in the 1970s, to post-colonial theory, queer theory, and postmodernism in the 1990s.
Covering a wide range of topics, including oppressive images, "woman" as fetishized object of desire, female spectatorship, and the cinematic pleasures of black women and lesbian women, Feminist Film Theory is an indispensable reference for scholars and students in the field.
Contributors include Judith Butler, Carol J. Clover, Barbara Creed, Michelle Citron, Mary Ann Doane, Teresa De Lauretis, Jane Gaines, Christine Gledhill, Molly Haskell, bell hooks, Claire Johnston, Annette Kuhn, Julia Lesage, Judith Mayne, Tania Modleski, Laura Mulvey, B. Ruby Rich, Kaja Silverman, Sharon Smith, Jackie Stacey, Janet Staiger, Anna Marie Taylor, Valerie Walkerdine, and Linda Williams.
Review
"Feminist Film Theory...collects many of the most important contributions to feminist debates about film on both sides of the Atlantic into a well-organized anthology." Resources for Feminist Research
Synopsis
Maps the major developments and debates in feminist film theory
For the past twenty-five years, cinema has been a vital terrain on which feminist debates about culture, representation, and identity have been fought. This anthology charts the history of those debates, bringing together the key, classic essays in feminist film theory. Feminist Film Theory maps the impact of major theoretical developments on this growing field-from structuralism and psychoanalysis in the 1970s, to post-colonial theory, queer theory, and postmodernism in the 1990s.
Covering a wide range of topics, including oppressive images, woman as fetishized object of desire, female spectatorship, and the cinematic pleasures of black women and lesbian women, Feminist Film Theory is an indispensable reference for scholars and students in the field.
Contributors include Judith Butler, Carol J. Clover, Barbara Creed, Michelle Citron, Mary Ann Doane, Teresa De Lauretis, Jane Gaines, Christine Gledhill, Molly Haskell, bell hooks, Claire Johnston, Annette Kuhn, Julia Lesage, Judith Mayne, Tania Modleski, Laura Mulvey, B. Ruby Rich, Kaja Silverman, Sharon Smith, Jackie Stacey, Janet Staiger, Anna Marie Taylor, Valerie Walkerdine, and Linda Williams.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [350]-351) and index.
About the Author
Sue Thornham is Professor and Head of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Sunderland.
Table of Contents
Image of women in film: some suggestions for future research /Sharon Smith --Woman's film /Molly Haskell --Women's cinema as counter-cinema /Claire Johnston --Crisis of naming in feminist film criticism /B. Ruby Rich --Visual pleasure and narrative cinema /Laura Mulvey --Caught and Rebecca: the inscription of femininity as absence /Mary Ann Doane --Oedipus interruptus /Teresa de Laurentis --Lost objects and mistaken subjects /Kaja Silverman --Women and film: a discussion of feminist aesthetics /Michelle Citron ... et al. --Afterthoughts on "Visual pleasure and narrative cinema" inspired by King Vidor's Duel in the sun (1946) /Laura Mulvey --Film and the masquerade: theorising the female spectator /Mary Ann Doane --Women's genres: melodrama, soap opera and theory / Annette Kuhn --Pleasurable negotiations /Christine Gledhill --Video replay: families, films and fantasy /Valerie Walkerdine --Feminine fascinations: forms of identification in star-audience relations /Jackie Stacey --Taboos and totems: cultural meanings of the Silence of the lambs /Janet Staiger --Her body, himself: gender in the slasher film /Carol J. Clover --Horror and the monstrous-feminine: an imaginary abjection /Barbara Creed --Film bodies: gender, genre and excess /Linda Williams --White privilege and looking relations: race and gender in feminist film theory /Jane Gaines --Oppositional gaze: black female spectators /bell hooks --Cinema and the dark continent: race and gender in popular film /Tania Modleski --Gender is burning: questions of appropriation and subversion /Judith Butler.