Multiple Voices in Feminist Film Criticism

1994

Diane Carson, , and Janice R. Welsch, editors

Collecting some of the most important writings in feminist film criticism and theory past and present, this volume offers readers a comprehensive survey of the rich and varied contributions feminist scholars have been making to film study over the past two decades. Includes essays by B. Ruby Rich, Teresa de Lauretis, Janet Staiger, Beverle Houston, Chris Straayer, bell hooks, Linda Williams, and Julia Lesage, among others.

Collecting some of the most important writings in feminist film criticism and theory past and present, this volume offers readers a comprehensive survey of the rich and varied contributions feminist scholars have been making to film study over the past two decades.

Includes essays by B. Ruby Rich, Teresa de Lauretis, Janet Staiger, Beverle Houston, Chris Straayer, bell hooks, Linda Williams, and Julia Lesage, among others.

Multiple Voices in Feminist Film Criticism provides an extensive survey of the voices working in current feminist cinema scholarship and includes a varied range of analytical perspective, from cultural studies to postcolonial discourses. Janice Welsch’s course file achieves an excellent balance between feminist film theory and the history of the women’s movement. This collection is not only of interest to the scholar, herstorian and filmmaker, but could also profitably be used as a classroom text for seminars in feminist film theory and practice, and as a guide for younger scholars within the discipline to keep them up-to-date on the most recent advances within the field.

Transformations

Collecting some of the most important writing in feminist film criticism and theory past and present, this volume offers readers a comprehensive survey of the rich and varied contributions feminist scholars have been making to film study over the past two decades. In its scope, Multiple Voices in Feminist Film Criticism illuminates the range of theoretical, critical, and educational directions open to feminist students of film and encourages readers to participate in assessing and shaping the critical context in which films are produced and received.

The editors have included a variety of perspectives informed by psychoanalytic, linguistic, historical, Marxist, textual, and postcolonial discourses. Along with highlighting the diversity of feminist film scholarship, this pluralist approach recognizes differences among women and is attentive to issues of race, class, nationality, ethnicity, and sexuality.

Combining original and previously published essays, Multiple Voices includes challenging reassessments of individual films, of genres and cycles, of narrative and filmic conventions, and of spectator positioning and response. In addition to this extensive collection of theory and criticism, the editors have added course files that explore the rationale for feminist film courses and show how films and critical readings can be presented in a meaningful way.

Diane Carson is professor of mass communications at St. Louis Community College at Meramec. Linda Dittmar is professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Janice R. Welsch is professor of film studies in the Department of English and journalism at Western Illinois University, Macomb.

Multiple Voices in Feminist Film Criticism provides an extensive survey of the voices working in current feminist cinema scholarship and includes a varied range of analytical perspective, from cultural studies to postcolonial discourses. Janice Welsch’s course file achieves an excellent balance between feminist film theory and the history of the women’s movement. This collection is not only of interest to the scholar, herstorian and filmmaker, but could also profitably be used as a classroom text for seminars in feminist film theory and practice, and as a guide for younger scholars within the discipline to keep them up-to-date on the most recent advances within the field.

Transformations

Multiple Voices demonstrates that feminist film criticism continues to foster lively debates and to pioneer in the exploration of questions whose answers resonate beyond feminist film scholarship.

Journal of Film and Video