This comprehensive textbook provides an accessible overview of the field of women and film, complemented by an analyses of key texts that illustrate major topics in the field. The text covers a wide range of areas in which women's representation and involvement in film are paramount issues.

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.

An introduction to feminist film theory as a discourse from the early seventies to the present. McCabe traces the broad ranging theories produced by feminist film scholarship, from formalist readings and psychoanalytical approaches to debates initiated by cultural studies, race and queer theory.

First published in 1988. Feminism and Film Theory traces the major issues in feminist film theory as they have evolved over the last decade. Comprised of essays that are classics of this intellectually sophisticated area of cultural studies, Feminism and Film Theory makes available much sought after essays that are often difficult to find. Empha­sizing the polemical challenge of feminism to film theory, this anthology forces us to reconsider film theory's most basic ideas about genre, narrative, image, spec­tatorship, and audience. The essays offer a model for a politically engaged critique of contemporary thought. Feminism and Film Theory will be of great interest to students and scholars concerned with film, critical theory, art and media, cultural studies, or feminism.

This book is aimed at helping media and film studies teachers introduce the basics of feminist film theory. No prior knowledge of feminist theory is required, the intended readers being university undergraduate teachers and students of film and media studies. Areas of emphasis include spectatorship, narrative, and ideology. Many illustrative case studies from popular cinema are used to offer students an opportunity to consider the connotations of visual and aural elements of film, narrative conflicts and oppositions, the implications of spectator “positioning” and viewer identification, and an ideological critical approach to film. Explanations of key terminology are included, along with classroom exercises and practice questions. Each chapter begins with key definitions and explanations of the concepts to be studied, including some historical background where relevant. Case studies include film noir, Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days and the work of directors Spike Lee, Claire Denis, and Paul Verhoeven. Studying Feminist Film Theory is a revised and expanded version of Feminist Film Studies: A Teacher’s Guide, published by Auteur in 2007.

Focusing on the ground-breaking work of Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, Teresa de Lauretis and Barbara Creed, this book explores how, since it began in the 1970s, feminist film theory has revolutionized the way that films and their spectators can be understood. Examining the new and distinctive approaches of each of these thinkers, this book provides the most detailed account so far of their ideas. It illuminates the six key concepts and demonstrates their value as tools for film analysis: the male gaze the female voice technologies of gender queering desire the monstrous-feminine masculinity in crisis. Testing their ideas with a number of other examples from contemporary cinema and TV, Shohini Chaudhuri shows how these four thinkers construct their theories through their reading of films. An excellent study companion for all students of film theory and women’s studies.

This text is aimed at helping media and film studies teachers introduce the basics of feminist film theory. No prior knowledge of feminist theory is required, the intended readers being university undergraduate teachers and students of film and media studies. Areas of emphasis include spectatorship, narrative, and ideology.