1st Edition

Feminism, Domesticity and Popular Culture

Edited By Stacy Gillis, Joanne Hollows Copyright 2009
    186 Pages
    by Routledge

    186 Pages
    by Routledge

    The relationship between feminism and domesticity has recently come in for renewed interest in popular culture. This collection makes an intervention into the debates surrounding feminism’s contentious relationship with domesticity and domestic femininities in popular culture. It offers an understanding of the place of domesticity in contemporary popular culture whilst considering how these domesticities might be understood from a feminist perspective. All the essays contribute to a more complex understanding of the relationships between feminism, femininity and domesticity, developing new ways of theorizing these relationships that have marked much of feminist history. Essay topics include Marguerite Patten, reality television shows like How Clean is Your House?, the figure of the maid in contemporary American cinema, aging or widowed domestic femininities, and the relationship between domesticity and motherhood.

    Introduction

    "Feminism, Post-feminism and Domesticity"

    Stacy Gillis (Newcastle University, UK) &

    Joanne Hollows (Nottingham Trent University, UK)

     

    Feminism and Domesticity

    1. "Australian Film, History and the Domestic"

    Justine Lloyd (University of Technology, Australia)

    2. "Cleaning and Clearing Out of Domestic Space: Feminism and the Development of Consumer Culture, 1950-1980"

    Lydia Martens (Durham University, UK)

    3. "‘Shall I be Mother?’ Motherhood and Domesticity in Popular Culture"

    Wendy Parkins (University of Otago, New Zealand)

    4. "‘Staying Home, Doing Nothing’: The Housewife and Feminist Generations"

    Linda Scott (University of Illinois, US)

     

    Post-feminism and Domesticity

    5. "The Husbandless Homes: Widowhood and Domesticity"

    Sarah Gamble (University of Wales Swansea, UK)

    6. "Wannabe Housewives: Postfeminism and the Revival of Domesticity"

    Stéphanie Genz (University of Stirling, UK)

    7. "Consuming Nigella"

    Lise Shapiro Sanders (Hampshire College, US)

    8. "The Horror of Home: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Postfeminist Domestic"

    Melanie Waters (University of Newcastle, UK)

     

    Doing Domesticity

    9. "‘There’s no such thing, like a female with good looks, who cooks and cleans’: Gendering Housework in Norway"

    Annechen Bahr Bugge and Ingun Grimstad Klepp (University of Oslo, Norway)

    10. "Ready-Maid Postfeminism: Assessing the Figure of the Domestic"

    Suzanne Leonard (University of Wisconsin, US)

    11. "Marguerite Patten, Television Cookery and Post-War British Femininity: Reconstructing Early Television for Women in Britain"

    Rachel Moseley (Warwick University, UK)

    12. "Telling the Classed Self: Reality Television and Audience Negotiations of Ethics"

    Beverley Skeggs (Goldsmiths College, UK), Nancy Thumim (Goldsmiths College, UK) & Helen Wood (University of Manchester, UK)

     

    Representing Domesticity

    13. "The Hysterical Housewife"

    Pamela Church Gibson (University of the Arts, UK)

    14. "Desiring Domesticity: The Personal, The Political and Domestic Spaces"

    Stacy Gillis (University of Newcastle, UK)

    15. "On Knitting Circles, Sisterhood and Second Wave Feminism: The Politics of Experience in Six Feet Under"

    Kristyn Gorton (Leeds Metropolitan University, UK)

    16. "Getting Lost: Or, where did Nora go when she walked out of the doll’s house?"

    Anna Hunt (University of Exeter, UK)

    Biography

    Stacy Gillis is Lecturer in English at Newcastle University, UK. Her research interests are in feminist theory, detective fiction and cybertheory. The editor of The Matrix Trilogy: Cyberpunk Reloaded (2005) and co-editor of Third Wave Feminism (Rev. ed., 2007), her current work includes a book on the corpse in popular culture.

    Joanne Hollows is Reader in Media and Cultural Studies at Nottingham Trent University, UK. She is the author of Feminism, Femininity and Popular Culture (2000) and Domestic Cultures (2008) and co-author of Food and Cultural Studies (2004). She has also co-edited a number of collections, including Feminism in Popular Culture (2006).