[ecrea] Postfeminism & Contemporary Hollywood Cinema

This is a final reminder that the deadline for abstracts for our essay 
collection Postfeminism and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema is fast 
approaching. Please find below and attached the detailed call for 
contributions. Abstracts must reach the editors (Dr. Joel Gwynne and 
Nadine Muller) no later than *Friday, 30 September 2011*.

If you have any questions regarding this collection or would like to 
discuss the suitability of an idea or abstract, please do not hesitate 
to get in touch with us at the email addresses listed in the call for 
contributions.

Joel and I look forward to hearing from you and to receiving your 
submissions.

Very best wishes,
Nadine Muller

(n.muller /at/ 2009.hull.ac.uk)

Feminist & Women's Studies Association UK & Ireland  (FWSA)
www.fwsa.org.uk

Public Engagement in Gender & Sexuality (PEGS)




Postfeminism and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema

- Call for Essay Proposals -

One distinguishing feature of postfeminism is its acceptance, use and 
manipulation of its position within popular culture. The existence of 
postfeminism as both a cultural media phenomenon and a contradictory and 
contentious term within academic discourse raises a number of debates 
surrounding contemporary feminist politics and their status within as 
well as stance toward contemporary consumer and media cultures. 
Postfeminism is invariably invoked in discussions of not merely popular 
genres such as 'chick lit' but also in relation to a plethora of written 
and visual texts that invoke reconfigurations of femininity and female 
sexuality, often in order to emphasise and/or explore female solidarity 
as a discourse of 'shared pleasures and strengths, rather than shared 
vulnerability and pain' (Genz and Brabon, 2009). As such, postfeminism 
is frequently interrogated within the realm of popular media forms which 
centre around the visualisation of female sexuality. Since the 
publication of Laura Mulvey's 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' 
(1973), female objectification has remained a popular and seemingly 
irresolvable site of conflict within feminist cinema studies in 
particular, revealing the complexities of the relationship between 
female objectification and empowerment.

The editors of this collection invite abstracts for contributions which 
investigate the diverse manifestations of postfeminism in contemporary 
Hollywood cinema, be it in order to highlight its regressive realities 
or its empowering potentials. Topics for consideration may include, but 
are by no means limited to:

v  Reconfigurations of femininity and/or female sexuality

v  Raunch culture, the mainstreaming of pornography and the 
sexualisation of culture

v  Postfeminism as inclusive/ exclusive social practice

v  Representations of particular female figures (i.e. mothers, porn 
stars and other sex workers, housewives, career women, superheroes, etc.)

v  Genre-specific criticism (i.e. postfeminism in action, horror, 
rom-com, etc.)

v  Postfeminism and girl cultures

v  Postfeminism and ageing

v  Postfeminism as backlash


Abstracts of 250 words for chapters of 6,000 should be emailed to the 
editors, Joel Gwynne ((joel.gwynne /at/ nie.edu.sg)) and Nadine Muller 
((N.Muller /at/ 2009.hull.ac.uk)), by September 30th 2011. Deadline for 
completed chapters: March 30th 2012.