Since at least the early 1970s, when Claire Johnston observed that despite ‘the enormous emphasis placed on woman as spectacle in the cinema … woman as woman is largely absent’, the relationship of cinema to the construction of gender identities and gendered pleasures has been a central concern within Film Studies. Bringing together the political concerns of second-wave feminism and the dizzying developments in theorizing about representation, culture, and society, early work—as exemplified by Johnston’s writing—changed radically the nature of Film Studies and the issues which it would address. Later scholars attended to concerns about sexuality, drawing on queer theory; and race and ethnicity, often influenced by postcolonialism. Most recently, Global Cinema Studies has sought to refocus these concerns yet again, whilst ‘postfeminism’ has questioned many of the assumptions on which Film Studies work on gender has rested.
Film and Gender is a new title in Routledge’s Major Works series, Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies. It meets the need for an authoritative reference work to enable users to navigate and make sense of the subject’s large literature, its history, and its continuing centrality within Film Studies. Compiled by Sue Thornham, whose work includes Passionate Detachments: An Introduction to Feminist Film Theory (1997) and Feminist Film Theory: A Reader (1999), and Niall Richardson, author of The Queer Cinema of Derek Jarman (2009) and Transgressive Bodies: Representations in Film and Popular Culture (2010), this eagerly awaited collection brings together in four volumes the foundational and the very best and most provocative scholarship on film and gender.
Film and Gender includes a full index and comprehensive introductions, newly written by the editors, which place the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. It is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by scholars and advanced students as a vital research tool.
Volume I: Histories and Origins
Part 1: Sociological Approaches
1. Sharon Smith, ‘The Image of Woman in Film’, Women and Film, 1972, 1, 13–21
2. Marjorie Rosen, ‘Delineating the Flapper’, Popcorn Venus (Peter Owen, 1975), pp. 73–93.
3. Joan Mellen, ‘Female Sexuality in Films’, Women and their Sexuality in the New Film (Davis-Poynter, 1974), pp. 55–73.
4. Molly Haskell, ‘The Woman’s Film’, From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies (University of Chicago Press, 1974), pp. 153–88.
5. B. Ruby Rich, ‘The Crisis of Naming in Feminist Film Criticism’, Jump Cut, 1978, 19, 9–12.
Part 2: Screen Theory
6. Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen, 1975, 16, 3, 6–18.
7. Lea Jacobs, ‘Now Voyager: Some Problems of Enunciation and Sexual Difference’, Camera Obscura, 1981, 3, 1, 88–109.
8. David N. Rodowick, ‘The Difficulty of Difference’, Wide Angle, 1982, 5, 1, 4–15.
9. Teresa De Lauretis, ‘Desire in Narrative’, Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (Macmillan, 1984), pp. 103–34.
10. Elizabeth Cowie, ‘Fantasia’, m/f, 1984, 9, 71–87.
11. Gaylyn Studlar, ‘Masochism and the Perverse Pleasures of the Cinema’, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 1984, 9, 4, 267–82.
Part 3: Gendered Spectatorship
12. Laura Mulvey, ‘Afterthoughts on Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema Inspired by King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun’, Framework, 1981, 15–17, 12–15
13. Mary Ann Doane, ‘Film and the Masquerade: Theorising the Female Spectator’, Screen, 1982, 23, 3–4, 74–87.
14. E. Ann Kaplan, ‘Is the Gaze Male?’, Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera (Methuen, 1983), pp. 23–35.
15. Linda Williams, ‘When the Woman Looks’, in Mary Ann Doane, Patricia Mellencamp, and Linda Williams (eds.), Re-Vision (University Publications of America, 1984), pp. 83–99.
16. Jackie Stacey, ‘Desperately Seeking Difference’, Screen, 1987, 28, 1, 48–61.
17. Christine Gledhill, ‘Pleasurable Negotiations’, in E. D. Pribram (ed.), Female Spectators: Looking at Film and Television (Verso, 1988), pp. 64–89.
18. Bell Hooks, ‘The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators’, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Turnaround, 1992), pp. 115–31.
Part 4: Taking up the Struggle: What Kind of Counter-Cinema?
19. Claire Johnston, ‘Women’s Cinema as Counter Cinema’, in Johnston (ed.), Notes on Women’s Cinema (SEFT, 1973), pp. 24–31.
20. Pam Cook, ‘Approaching the Work of Dorothy Arzner’, in Claire Johnston (ed.), The Work of Dorothy Arzner (BFI, 1975), pp. 9–18.
21. Julia Lesage, ‘The Political Aesthetics of the Feminist Documentary Film’, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, 1978, 3, 4, 82–107.
22. Laura Mulvey, ‘Feminism, Film and the Avant-Garde’, Framework, 1979, 10, 3–10.
23. Teresa De Lauretis, ‘Aesthetic and Feminist Theory: Rethinking Women’s Cinema’, New German Critique, 1985, 34, 154–75.
24. Michelle Citron, ‘Women’s Film Production: Going Mainstream’, in E. Deidre Pribram (ed.), Female Spectators (Verso, 1988), pp. 45–63.
Volume II: Genre and Star
Part 5: Gendering Genre
25. Steve Neale, ‘Questions of Genre’, Screen, 1990, 31, 1, 45–66.
26. Annette Kuhn, ‘Women’s Genres: Melodrama, Soap Opera and Theory’, Screen, 1984, 25, 1, 18–28.
27. Linda Williams, ‘Film Bodies: Gender, Genre and Excess’, Film Quarterly, 1991, 44, 4, 2–13.
28. Yvonne Tasker, ‘Women Warriors: Gender, Sexuality and Hollywood’s Fighting Heroines’, Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema (Routledge, 1993), pp. 14–35.
Part 6: The Melodrama/‘Woman’s’ Film
29. Mary Ann Doane, ‘The "Woman’s Film": Possession and Address’, in Mary Ann Doane, Patricia Mellencamp, and Linda Williams (eds.), Re-Vision (University Publications of America, 1984), pp. 67–82.
30. Christine Gledhill, ‘Introduction’, Home is Where the Heart is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film (BFI, 1987), pp. 1–4.
31. Lea Jacobs, ‘The Woman’s Picture and the Poetics of Melodrama’, Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture and Media Studies, 1993, 11, 1, 31, 120–47.
32. Linda Williams, ‘"Something Else Besides a Mother": Stella Dallas and the Maternal Melodrama’, in Christine Gledhill (ed.), Home is Where the Heart is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film (BFI, 1987), pp. 299–325.
Part 7: Horror and the Monstrous Feminine
33. Carol Clover, ‘Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film’, Representations, 1987, 20, 187–228.
34. Barbara Creed, ‘Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection’, Screen, 1986, 27, 1, 44–70.
35. Shelley Stamp, ‘Horror, Femininity and Carrie’s Monstrous Puberty’, in Barry Keith Grant (ed.), The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film (University of Texas Press, 1996), pp. 279–95.
36. Catherine Constable, ‘Becoming the Monster’s Mother: Morphologies of Identity in the Alien Series’, in Annette Kuhn (ed.), Alien Zone II (Verso, 1999), pp. 173–202.
Part 8: Gender and Comedy
37. Kristen Anderson Wagner, ‘"Have Women a Sense of Humor?": Comedy and Femininity in Early Twentieth-Century Film’, Velvet Light Trap, 2011, 68, 35–46.
38. Pamela Robertson, ‘"The Kinda Comedy That Imitates Me": Mae West’s Identification with the Feminist Camp’, Cinema Journal, 1993, 32, 2, 57–72.
39. Jane Arthurs, ‘Revolting Women: The Body in Comic Performance’, in J. Arthurs and J. Grimshaw (eds.), Women’s Bodies: Discipline and Transgression (Cassell, 1994), pp. 137–64.
40. David R. Shumway, ‘Screwball Comedies: Constructing Romance, Mystifying Marriage’, Cinema Journal, 1991, 30, 4, 7–23.
41. Stella Bruzzi, ‘The Comedy of Cross-Dressing’, Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies (Routledge, 1997), pp. 147–72.
Part 9: The Star and Film Meanings
42. Richard Dyer, Stars (BFI, 1979), pp. 1–7.
43. Christine Gledhill, ‘Introduction’, in Gledhill (ed.), Stardom: Industry of Desire (Routledge, 1991), pp. xiii–xx, 13–20.
44. Jackie Stacey, ‘How Do I Look?’, Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship (Routledge, 1994), pp. 1–19.
45. Paul MacDonald, ‘Why Study Film Acting? Some Opening Reflections’, in C. Baron, D. Carson, and F. P. Tomasulo (eds.), More Than a Method: Trends and Traditions in Contemporary Film Performance (Wayne State University Press, 2004), pp. 23–41.
Volume III: Negotiating Gender
Part 10: Viewing Men
46. Richard Dyer, ‘Don’t Look Now: The Male Pin-Up’, Screen, 1982, 23, 3–4, 61–73.
47. Paul Willemen, ‘Anthony Mann: Looking at the Male’, Framework, 1981, 15–17, 16–20.
48. Steve Neale, ‘Masculinity as Spectacle’, Screen, 1983, 24, 6, 2–16.
49. Richard Meyer, ‘Rock Hudson’s Body’, in Diana Fuss (ed.), Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories (Routledge, 1991), pp. 259–88.
50. Barbara Creed, ‘Dark Desires: Male Masochism in the Horror Film’, in Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark (eds.), Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema (Routledge, 1993), pp. 118–34.
Part 11: Action Hero(in)es
51. Elizabeth Hills, ‘From "Figurative Males" to Action Heroines: Further Thoughts on Action Women in the Cinema’, Screen, 1999, 40, 1, 38–50.
52. M. Dargis, ‘"Thelma & Louise" and the Tradition of the Male Road Movie’, in P. Cook and P. Dodd (eds.), Women and Film: A Sight and Sound Reader (Scarlet Press, 1995), pp. 86–92.
53. Yvonne Tasker, ‘Action Women: Muscles, Mothers and Others’, Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema (Routledge, 1998), pp. 65–88.
54. Rikke Schubart, ‘Woman with a Gun Does Not Signify Man with a Phallus: Gender and Narrative Change in the Action Movie’, Nordicom Review, 1998, 1, 205–14.
Part 12: Queer(ing) Gender
55. Niall Richardson, ‘Queer Cinema’, The Queer Cinema of Derek Jarman: Critical and Cultural Readings (I. B. Tauris, 2009), pp. 47–80.
56. Brenda Cooper, ‘Boys Don’t Cry and Female Masculinity: Reclaiming a Life & Dismantling the Politics of Normative Heterosexuality’, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 2002, 19, 1, 44–63.
57. Martin Shingler, ‘Masquerade or Drag? Bette Davis and the Ambiguities of Gender’, Screen, 1995, 36, 3, 179–92.
58. Jackie Stacey, ‘She is Not Herself: The Deviant Relations of Alien Resurrection’, Screen, 2003, 44, 3, 251–76.
Part 13: Gender, Race, and Nation
59. Jane Gaines, ‘White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory’, Screen, 1988, 29, 4, 12–17.
60. Mary Ann Doane, ‘Dark Continents: Epistemologies of Racial and Sexual Difference in Psychoanalysis and the Cinema’, Femmes Fatales (London, 1991), pp. 209–48.
61. Ella Shohat, ‘Gender and Culture of Empire: Toward a Feminist Ethnography of the Cinema’, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 1991, 13, 1–3, 45–84.
62. Jigma Desai, ‘Homesickness and Motion Sickness: Embodied Migratory Subjectivities in Gurinder Chadha’s Bhaji on the Beach’, Beyond Bollywood (Routledge, 2004), pp. 133–57.
Volume IV Re-visioning Feminism(s)
Part 14: Postfeminism and its Texts
63. Amanda Lotz, ‘Postfeminist Television Criticism: Rehabilitating Critical Terms and Identifying Postfeminist Attributes’, Feminist Media Studies, 2001, 1, 1, 105–21.
64. Charlotte Brunsdon, ‘Post-Feminism and Shopping Films’, Screen Tastes (Routledge, 1997), pp. 81–102.
65. Laurie Ouellette, ‘Victims No More: Postfeminism, Television, and Ally McBeal’, The Communication Review, 2002, 5, 315–37.
66. Linda Mizejewski, ‘Dressed to Kill: Postfeminist Noir’, Cinema Journal, 2005, 44, 2, 121–7.
67. Kathleen Rowe Karlyn, ‘Final Girls and Epic Fantasies’, Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers (University of Texas Press, 2011), pp. 99–126.
Part 15: Questioning Postfeminism
68. Suzanna Danuta Walters, ‘Postfeminism and Popular Culture: A Case Study of the Backlash’, Material Girls (University of California Press, 1995), pp. 116–42.
69. Angela McRobbie, ‘Postfeminism and Popular Culture’, Feminist Media Studies, 2004, 4, 3, 255–64.
70. Diane Negra, ‘Quality Postfeminism? Sex and the Single Girl on HBO’, Genders, 2004, 39.
71. Cristina Lucia Stasia, ‘"My Guns are in the Fendi!" The Postfeminist Female Action Hero’, in Stacy Gillis, Gillian Howie, and Rebecca Munford (eds.), Third Wave Feminism (Palgrave, 2007), pp. 237–49.
72. Hilary Radner, ‘Neo-Feminism and the Rise of the Single Girl’, NeoFeminist Cinema (Routledge, 2011), pp. 6–25.
Part 16: Global Film Feminisms
73. Trinh T. Minh-ha (1995), ‘"Who is Speaking?" Of Nation, Community, and First-Person Interviews’, in Laura Pietropaolo and Ada Gestaferri (eds.), Feminisms in the Cinema (Indiana University Press, 1995), pp. 41–59.
74. Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, ‘Third World Women’s Cinema: If the Subaltern Speaks, Will We Listen?’, in Bishnupriya Ghosh and Brinda Bose (eds.), Interventions: Feminist Dialogues on Third World Women’s Literature and Film (New York: Garland, 1997), pp. 213–26.
75. Rey Chow, ‘Woman, Fetish, Particularism: Articulating Chinese Cinema with a Cross-Cultural Problematic’, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 2007, 1, 3, 209–22.
76. Negar Mottahedeh, ‘"Life Is Color!" Toward a Transnational Feminist Analysis of Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Gabbeh’, Signs, 2004, 30, 1, 1403–24.
77. E. Ann Kaplan, ‘Global Feminisms and the State of Feminist Film Theory’, Signs, 2004, 30, 1, 1236–48.
Part 17: Authorship and Women’s Filmmaking
78. Kaja Silverman, ‘The Female Authorial Voice’, The Acoustic Mirror (University of Indiana Press, 1988), pp. 187–218.
79. Anneke Smelik, ‘And the Mirror Cracked: Metaphors of Violence and Resistance’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 1993, 16, 4, 349–63.
80. Sue Thornham, ‘Starting to Feel Like a Chick: Re-Visioning Romance in the Cut’, Feminist Media Studies, 2007, 7, 1, 33–46.
81. Christina Lane, ‘From "The Loveless to Point Break": Kathryn Bigelow’s Trajectory in Action’, Cinema Journal, 1998, 37, 4, 59–81.
82. Patricia Mellencamp, ‘Making History: Julie Dash’, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 1994, 15, 1, 76–101.
83. Sumita S. Chakravarty, ‘"Can the Subaltern Weep?": Mourning as Metaphor in Rudaali (The Crier)’, in Diana Robin and Ira Jaffe (eds.), Redirecting the Gaze (State University of New York Press, 1999), pp. 283–306.
