Screen Women: Body Narratives in Popular American Film

Readings

[FFT] = Thornham, Sue, ed. Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. NYU Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780814782446.

SES #	TOPICS	READINGS
1	Introduction: Feminist Film Theory and the Politics of Vision In class: Clips from Peeping Tom, Some Like It Hot, Mad Men.	[FFT] Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” (PDF) pp. 58-69. [FFT] ———. “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” pp. 122–30. [FFT] Stacey, Jackie. “Feminine Fascinations: Forms of Identification.” pp. 196–209. [FFT] hooks, bell. “The Oppositional Gaze.” (PDF) pp. 307-20.
2	The Women’s Film and Makeover Narratives	LaPlace, Maria. “Producing and Consuming the Woman’s Film: Discursive Struggle in Now, Voyager.” In Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. Edited by Christine Gledhill. British Film Institute, 1987. ISBN: 9780851702001. Jacobs, Lea. “Now Voyager: Some Problems of Enunciation and Sexual Difference.” (PDF) Camera Obscura 3, no. 17 (1981): 88–109. [FFT] Doane, Mary Ann Doane. “Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator.” (PDF) pp. 131–45. Ford, Elizabeth, and Deborah Mitchell. “Charting the Course.” In The Makeover in Movies: Before and After In Hollywood Films, 2941–2002. Mcfarland & Co. Inc Pub, 2004. ISBN: 9780786417216. [Preview with Google Books]
3	Body Makeovers	Weber, Brenda. “Makeover Nation: Americanness, Neoliberalism, and the Citizen-Subject.” In Makeover TV: Selfhood, Citizenship, and Celebrity. Duke University Press Books, 2009. ISBN: 9780822345688. [Preview with Google Books] Fox-Kales, Emily. “Body Transformation: Ugly Ducklings, Swans, and Movie Makeovers.” In Body Shots: Hollywood and the Culture of Eating Disorders. State University of New York Press, 2011. ISBN: 9781438435282. [Preview with Google Books] Ferriss, Suzanne. “Fashioning Femininity in the Makeover Flick.” In Chick Flicks: Contemporary Women at the Movies. Edited by Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young. Routledge, 2007. ISBN: 9780415962568. [Preview with Google Books] Covino, Deborah Caslav. “I’m Doing it For Me.” In Amending the Abject Body: Aesthetic Makeovers in Medicine and Culture. State University of New York Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780791462324. [Preview with Google Books]
4	Body Genres and The Final Girl In class: Clips from Thelma and Louise, Terminator 2, Carrie.	[FFT] Clover, Carol. “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film.” pp. 229–34. [FFT] Creed, Barbara. “Horror and the Monstrous Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection.” (PDF) pp. 251–66. [FFT] Williams, Linda. “Film Bodies: Gendfer, Genre and Excess.” pp. 267–81. Tasker, Yvonne. “Women Warriors: Gender, Sexuality, and Hollywood’s Fighting Heroines.” In Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema. Routledge, 1993. ISBN: 9780415092241. [Preview with Google Books] Recommended Peterson, Anne Helen. “The Exquisite Repulsion of American Horror Story: An Essay on Abjection.” LARB blog. October 21, 3013.
5	Action Thrillers and the Rape Revenge Cycle In class: Clips from The Silence of the Lambs, Kill Bill 2.	Neroni, Hilary. “Complementarity and Its Discontents: An Overview of Violent Women in American Film.” In The Violent Woman: Femininity, Narrative, and Violence in Contemporary American Cinema. State University of New York Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780791463840. [Preview with Google Books] Heller-Nicholas, Alexandra. “Introduction.” In Rape Revenge Films: A Critical Study. McFarland, 2011. ISBN: 9780786449613. [Preview with Google Books] Valentine, Catherine. “Tiny, Tattooed, and Tough as Nails: Representations of Lisbeth Salander’s Body.” In Men Who Hate Women and Women Who Kick Their Asses: Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy in Feminist Perspective. Edited by Donna King and Carrie Lee Smith. Vanderbilt University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780826518507.  Murphy, Caryn Murphy. “Feminist Avenger or Male Fantasy?: Reading the Reception of the Millennium Trilogy.” In Men Who Hate Women and Women Who Kick Their Asses: Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy in Feminist Perspective. Edited by Donna King and Carrie Lee Smith. Vanderbilt University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780826518507.
6	Adolescent Bodies / Teen Sexuality	Harris, Anita. “The ‘Can Do’ Girl Versus the ‘At Risk’ Girl.” In Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-First Century. Routledge, 2003. ISBN: 9780415947022. Tolman, Deborah. “Daring to Desire: Culture and the Bodies of Adolescent Girls.” In The Politics of Women’s Bodies: Sexuality, Appearance, and Behavior. Edited by Rose Weitz and Samantha Kwan. Oxford University Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780199343799. Karlyn, Kathleen Rowe. “Introduction: Bad Mothers and Angry Girls” and Chapter 6: “Teen Girl Melodramas.” In Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers: Redefining Feminism on Screen. University of Texas Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780292737549. [Preview with Google Books]
7	Extreme Body Mastery: Discipline and Surveillance	Bordo, Susan. “The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity” and “Reading the Slender Body.” In Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. University of California Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780520240544. [Preview with Google Books] Fox-Kales, Emily. “Body Mastery and the Ideology of Fitness.” In Body Shots: Hollywood and the Culture of Eating Disorders. State University of New York Press, 2011. ISBN: 9781438435282. [Preview with Google Books] Klein, Amanda. “Black Swan, Cinematic Excess, and the Full Body Experience.” Flow TV. February 11, 2001. Saukko, Paula. “Interrogating the Anorexic Self.” In The Anorexic Self: A Personal, Political Analysis of a Diagnostic Discourse. State University of New York Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780791474624. [Preview with Google Books] Fusco, Katherine. “The Actress Experience: Cruel Knowing and the Death of the Picture Personality in Black Swan and The Girlfriend Experience.” Camera Obscura 28, no. 1 (2013): 1–35.
8	Narratives of Pregnancy Related media: Teen Mom, Baby Mama, The Switch	Maher, Jane Maree. “Eggs in Many Baskets”: Juno (2007), Baby Mama (2008) and the New Intimacies of Reproduction." In Feminism at the Movies: Understanding Gender in Contemporary Popular Cinema. Edited by Hilary Radner and Rebecca Stringer. Routledge, 2011. ISBN: 9780415895880. Thoma, Pamela. “Buying Up Baby”: Modern Feminine Subjectivity, Assertions of “Choice,” and the Repudiation of Reproductive Justice in Postfeminist Unwanted Pregnancy Films." Feminist Media Studies 9, no. 4 (2009): 409–25. Bordo, Susan. “Are Mothers Persons? Reproductive Rights and the Politics of Subject-ivity.” In Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. University of California Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780520240544. [Preview with Google Books]
9	Narratives of Family and Questions of Sexualities Special Event: Women Take the Reel Film Festival	No readings
10	Imperiled Masculinity, Monstrous Mothers, and At Risk Teens Related media: Spanglish, Ginger and Rosa	Karlyn, Kathleen Rowe. “Trouble in Paradise: American Beauty and the Incest Motif” and “The Motherline and a Wicked Powerful Feminism.” Chapters 2 and 8 in Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers: Redefining Feminism on Screen. University of Texas Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780292737549.  Leonard, Suzanne. “‘I Hate My Job, I Hate Everybody Here’: Adultery, Boredom and the Working Girl in Twenty-First Century American Cinema.” In Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture. Edited by Diane Negra and Yvonne Tasker. Duke University Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780822340324.
11	Transgender Bodies	Rigney, Melissa. “Brandon Goes to Hollywood: Boys Don’t Cry and the Transgender Body in Film.” Film Criticism 28, no. 2 (2003): 4. Dittmar, Linda. “Performing Gender in Boys Don’t Cry.” In Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice: Cinema of Girlhood. Edited by Frances Gateward and Murray Pomerance. Wayne State University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780814329184. [Preview with Google Books] Cooper, Brenda Cooper. “Boys Don’t Cry and Female Masculinity: Reclaiming a Life & Dismantling the Politics of Normative Heterosexuality.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 19, no. 1 (2002): 44–63.
12	Unruly Bodies, Part One	Parasecoli, Fabio. “Bootylicious: Food and the Female Body in Contemporary Black Popular Culture.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 35, no. 1–2 (2007): 110–25. Farrell, Amy Erdman. “Fat and the Un-Civilized Body” and “Narrating Fat Shame.” In Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture. NYU Press, 2011. 9780814727690. [Preview with Google Books] Hartley, Cecilia. “Letting Ourselves Go: Making Room for the Fat Body in Feminist Scholarship.” In Bodies out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression. Edited by Jana Evans Braziel and Kathleen LeBesco. University of California Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780520225855. [Preview with Google Books]
13	Unruly Bodies, Part Two	Karlyn, Kathleen Rowe. “Pig Ladies, Big Ladies, and Ladies with Big Mouths: Feminism and the Carnivalesque.” In The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter. University of Texas Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780292770690. [Preview with Google Books] Braziel, Jana. “Sex and Fat Chics.” In Bodies out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression. Edited by Jana Evans Braziel and Kathleen LeBesco. University of California Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780520225855. [Preview with Google Books] Kuppers, Petra. “Fatties on Stage: Feminist Performances.” In Bodies out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression. Edited by Jana Evans Braziel and Kathleen LeBesco. University of California Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780520225855. [Preview with Google Books] Warner, Helen. “A New Feminist Revolution in Hollywood Comedy?: Postfeminist Discourses and the Critical Reception of Bridesmaids.” In Postfeminism and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. ISBN: 9781137306838. [Preview with Google Books] Recommended San Filippo, Maria. “Owning Her Abjection: Lena Dunham’s Queer Feminist Sexual Politics.” in media res. January 7, 2013.
14	Student Project Presentations	No readings