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Women,
Gender & Feminist Criticism,
Theory and History
See also: On Individual Films and Media
> Film Criticism
 The Gendered Screen
Brenda Austin-Smith & George Melnyk
This book is the first major study of Canadian women filmmakers since the groundbreaking Gendering the Nation (1999). The Gendered Screen updates the subject with discussions of important filmmakers such as Deepa Mehta, Ann Wheeler, Mina Shum, Lynne Stopkewich, Lea Pool, and Patricia Rozema, whose careers have produced major bodies of work. It also introduces critical studies of newer filmmakers such as Andrea Dorfman and Sylvia Hamilton and new media video artists. Softcover, 270 pp. $29.95.
 Marked Women: Prostitutes and Prostitution in the Cinema
Russell Campbell
This engaging and generously illustrated study explores the depiction of female prostitute characters and prostitution in world cinema, from the silent era to the present day. From the woman with control over her own destiny to the woman who cannot get away from her pimp, Russell Campbell shows the diverse representation of prostitutes in film. Softcover, 450 pp. $28.95.
 The Violent Woman
Hilary Neroni
In The Violent Woman, Hilary Neroni brings psychoanalytically informed
film theory to bear on issues of femininity, violence, and narrative
in contemporary American cinema. Examining such films as Thelma
and Louise, Fargo, Natural Born Killers, and The
Long Kiss Goodnight,
Neroni explores why American audiences are so fascinated--even excited--by
cinematic representations of violent women, and what these representations
reveal about violence in our society and our cinema. Neroni argues
that violent women characters disrupt cinematic narrative and challenge
cultural ideals, suggesting how difficult it is for Hollywood--the
greatest of ideology machines--to integrate the violent women into
its typical narrative structure. Softcover, 203 pp. $29.95.
 Feminist Film Theorists
Shohini Chaudhuri
This book focuses on the groundbreaking work of Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman,
Teresa de Lauretis, and Barbara Creed. Each of these thinkers has
opened up a new and distinctive approach to the study of film and
this book provides the most detailed account so far of their ideas.
Shohini Chaudhuri illuminates their work by explaining the concepts
of the male gaze, the female gaze, technologies of gender, queering
desire, the monstrous-feminine, and masculinity in crisis. Softcover,
148 pp. $29.95.
 Red Velvet Seat: Women's Writing on the First Fifty Years of Cinema
Antonia Lant & Ingrid Periz
As viewers, critics, actresses and directors, women have always been central
to cinema. However, full evidence of their roles has until now remained
scant and dispersed, eclipsed in historical opinion formed through
the texts of men. Using a collection of written accounts from the turn
of the 20th century to 1950 this anthology seeks to rectify this academic
imbalance. Comendious and absorbing, Red Velvet Seat is an invaluable
contribution to the history of cinema. Softcover, 872 pp. $52.00.
 Framed:
Women in Law and Film
Orit Kamir
Some women attack and harm men who abuse them. Social norms, law
and films all participate in framing these occurences, guiding us in understanding
and judging them. Through innovative readings of a dozen movies made
between 1928 and 2001 in Europe, Japan and the United States, Orit
Kamir shows
that in representing "gender crimes," feature films have constructed
a cinematic jurisprudence, training audiences worldwide in patterns
of judgment of women (and men) in such situations. Offering a novel
formulation of the emerging field of law and film, Kamir combines
basic legal
concepts--murder,
rape, provocation, insanity and self-defense--with narratology, social
science methodologies, and film studies.
Softcover, 330 pp. $29.95.
 The
Actress: Hollywood Acting and the Female Star
Karen Hollinger
The Actress: Hollywood Acting and the Female Star investigates the contemporary
film actress both as an artist and as an ideological construct. Divided
into two sections, this book first examines the major issues in studying
film acting, stardom, and the Hollywood actress. Part two examines
five case studies: Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon, Jodie Foster, Angela
Bassett, and Gwyneth Paltrow, each of whose careers exemplifies key
issues in the
creation of film stardom, the function of acting style, and the creation
of celebrity.
Softcover, 257 pp. $31.95.
 The
Modern Amazons: Warrior Women On-Screen
Dominique Mainon & James Ursini
With hundreds of stunning photographs and entertaining vignettes from classic,
cult, and little-known films, The Modern Amazon documents the
transformation of the archetypal warrior woman in film and television, from early
film figures like Joan of Arc to the present-day onslaught of strong female action
characters. Authors Dominique Mainon and James Ursini offer a one-two punch of
sheer fun and keen insight that puts this growing trend in sociological perspective.
Softcover, 400 pp. $32.95.
 Thinking
in Images: Film Theory, Feminist Philosophy and Marlene Dietrich
Catherine Constable
Examines the relationship between socio-cultural images and philosophy,
tracing the image of woman in theories of beauty, art and truth offered
by Nietzsche and his 20th century successors. Demonstrated through examination
of three Dietrich films, The Scarlet Empress, The
Devil is a Woman and
Shanghai Express. Softcover, 202 pp. $38.95.
 The
Women Who Knew Too Much
Second Edition
Tania Modleski
A close consideration of Hitchcock's attitude towards his female characters
in seven of his films, the first edition of The Women Who Knew Too
Much has
become a classic work in feminist film theory and criticism. For this new edition,
Tania Modleski has written a new chapter in which she discusses the last fifteen
years of Hitchcock criticism, and the continued struggle for recognition of
a feminist perspective on the filmmaker's work. Softcover, 185 pp. $27.95.
 Bad
Girls: Film Fatales, Sirens, and Molls
Tony Turtu
Sensational and unapologetic, B movie bad girls of the big screen starred in
sexy suspense thrillers during film's golden age. Blinded by desire, crazed with
jealousy, and ripe with sin, the luscious, lascivious ladies of B movie fame
broke the innocent female stereotype. A celebration of the wicked, the wayward,
and the wanton, Bad Girls -- a collection of movie posters,
lobby cards, and photographs -- pays tribute to the actresses who made careers
out of being bad. Hardcover, 176 pp. $55.95.
 Feminist
Film Studies: Writing the Woman into Cinema
Janet McCabe
Feminist Film Studies provides an introduction to feminist film theory as
a discourse that grew in cultural significance since the 1970s to the
present. Janet McCabe traces the broad-ranging knowledges produced by
feminist film
scholarship, from formalist readings and psychoanalytical approaches
to debates initiated by cultural studies, race and queer theory. Softcover,
136 pp. $25.95.
 Projections
13: Women film-makers on film-making
Isabella Weibrecht & John Boorman
This edition of Projections brings together women working right across
the spectrum of film-making today, through a collection of interviews, conversations
and articles. With such diverse sections as Rebecca Miller's diary of making Personal
Velocity to a piece on Jean Renoir by the late and legendary critic Pauline
Kael, Projections dedicates this edition to the "welcome growth of
female input
to movie-making." Softcover, 269 pp. $34.00.
 Katherine
Hepburn: Star as Feminist
Andrew Britton
Of all the major Hollywood stars, Katherine Hepburn was the least conventional,
conforming to none of the stereotypes of female superstardom. In this scholarly
book Andrew Britton proposes a feminist reading of her films, arguing that her
persona raises problems about class, female sexuality, and women's oppression
that strain to the limits the conventions of a cinema ultimately committed to
the reassertion of bourgeois
gender roles. Softcover, 264 pp. $32.95.
 Alice
Guy Blache: Lost Visionary of the Cinema
Alison McMahan
Part of the Women Make Cinema series, which is dedicated to celebrating
the contribution of women to all aspects of film-making throughout
the world, this book pieces together the career of Alice Guy Blanche,
the first woman filmmaker and the only woman filmmaker for the first decade
of the industry's history. Softcover, 361 pp. $24.95.
 Women
of Vision: Histories in Feminist Film & Video
Alexandra Juhasz
Alexandra Juhasz asked twenty women to tell their stories -- women
whose names make up a who's who in independent and experimental
film & video. What emerged is
a compelling (and previously undocumented) history of feminism and feminist film
& video, from its orgins in the fifties and sixties to its apex in the
seventies to today. Softcover, 343 pp. $32.95.
 Women's
Cinema:
The Contested Screen
Alison Butler
Women's Cinema: The Contested Screen provides an introduction to critical
debates around women's filmmaking and relates those debates to a variety of cinematic
practices. Using both canonical directors as well as less established names as examples,
Alison Butler argues that women's cinema is unified in spite of its diversity by
the ways in which it re-works cinematic conventions. Softcover, 134 pp. $30.50.
 Film and Authorship
Virginia Wright Wexman
During the 1960's when cinema first entered the acadamy as a serious object
of study, the primary focus was on "auteurism" -- film authorship.
Spanning approaches including poststructuralism, feminism, queer theory, postcolonialism,
and cultural studies, the essays in this collection ask, what does
auteurship look like today in light of all these developments? Includes an
extensive bibliography. Softcover, 270 pp. $36.50.
 A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical
Stacy Wolf
Using popular titles such as South Pacific, My Fair Lady, Camelot,
and The Sound of Music, this scholarly text focuses, through a lesbian
feminist lens, how the musical theatre of the 50's and 60's subverted
traditional ideologies by celebrating strong female characters who challenged
gender expectations. Softcover, 289 pp., $30.95.
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