After decades of feminism and deconstruction, romance remains firmly in place as a central preoccupation in the lives of most women. Divorce rates skyrocket, the traditional family is challenged from all sides, and yet romance seems indestructible. In terms of its cultural representation, the popularity of romance also appears unchallenged. Popular fiction, Hollywood cinema, television soap-operas, and the media in general all display a seemingly bottomless appetite for romantic subjects. The trappings of classic romance--white weddings, love songs, Valentine's Day--are as commercially viable as ever.

In this anthology of original essays, romance is revisited from a wide spectrum of perspectives, not just in fiction and film but in a whole range of cultural phenomena. Essays range over such issues as Valentine's Day, interracial relationships, medieval erotic visions and modern romance fiction, the relationship between the lesbian poet H.D. and Bryher, the pervasive whiteness of romantic desire, lesbian erotica in the age of AIDS, and the public romance of Charles and Diana.

Writing otherwise is a collection of essays by established feminist and cultural critics interested in experimenting with new styles of expression. Leading figures in their field, such as Marianne Hirsch, Lynne Pearce, Griselda Pollock, Carol Smart, Jackie Stacey and Janet Wolff, all risk new ways of writing about themselves and their subjects. Aimed at both general and academic readers interested in how scholarly writing might be more innovative and creative, this collection introduces the personal, the poetic and the experimental into the frame of cultural criticism. This collection of essays is highly interdisciplinary and contributes to debates in sociology, history, anthropology, art history, cultural and media studies and gender studies. -- .

Screen Histories: A `Screen' Reader is a collection of some of the best historical work on film and television published in the last twenty years in one of the leading academic journals in the field, Screen. This collection includes interventions on the history of screen institutions, technologies, discourses, texts, and audiences.

This exciting collection of work from leading feminist scholars including Elspeth Probyn, Penelope Deutscher and Chantal Nadeau engages with and extends the growing feminist literature on lived and imagined embodiment and argues for consideration of the skin as a site where bodies take form - already written upon but open to endless re-inscription.
Individual chapters consider such issues as the significance of piercing, tattooing and tanning, the assault of self harm upon the skin, the relation between body painting and the land among the indigenous people of Australia and the cultural economy of fur in Canada. Pierced, mutilated and marked, mortified and glorified, scarred by disease and stretched and enveloping the skin of another in pregnancy, skin is seen here as both a boundary and a point of connection - the place where one touched and is touched by others, both the most private of experiences and the most public marker of a raced, sexed and national history.

In a historical investigation of the pleasures of cinema, Star Gazing puts female spectators back into theories of spectatorship. Combining film theory with a rich body of ethnographic research, Jackie Stacey investigates how female spectators understood Hollywood stars in the 1940's and 1950's. Her study challenges the universalism of psychoanalytic theories of female spectatorship which have dominated the feminist agenda within film studies for over two decades. Drawing on letters and questionnaires from over three hundred keen cinema-goers, Stacey investigates the significance of certain Hollywood stars in women's memories of wartime and postwar Britain. Three key processes of spectatorship - escapism, identification and consumption - are explored in detail in terms of their multiple and changing meanings for female spectators at this time. Star Gazing demonstrates the importance of cultural and national location for the meanings of female spectatorship, giving a new direction to questions of popular culture and female desire.

Queer Screen: A Screen Reader brings together a selection of key articles on queer cinema published over the past two decades in the internationally renowned journal, Screen, with new introductory editorial material from Jackie Stacey and Sarah Street.

Queer Screen features scholarship which has contributed to the emergence of queer theory in the field of screen studies during the last fifteen years, demonstrating how writers in Screen have contributed to developments in queer theory as it relates to a wide range of popular and experimental films and videos.

The book considers a wide range of case studies including popular films such as Boys Don t Cry, Alien Resurrection, Brief Encounter, Bound, and Rope, as well as experimental films and videos by artists such as Richard Fung, Ulrike Ottinger, Sheila McLaughlin and Derek Jarman.

Queer Screen: A Screen Reader brings together a selection of key articles on queer cinema published over the past two decades in the internationally renowned journal, Screen, with new introductory editorial material from Jackie Stacey and Sarah Street.

Queer Screen features scholarship which has contributed to the emergence of queer theory in the field of screen studies during the last fifteen years, demonstrating how writers in Screen have contributed to developments in queer theory as it relates to a wide range of popular and experimental films and videos.

The book considers a wide range of case studies including popular films such as Boys Don't Cry, Alien Resurrection, Brief Encounter, Bound, and Rope, as well as experimental films and videos by artists such as Richard Fung, Ulrike Ottinger, Sheila McLaughlin and Derek Jarman.

This exciting collection of work from leading feminist scholars including Elspeth Probyn, Penelope Deutscher and Chantal Nadeau engages with and extends the growing feminist literature on lived and imagined embodiment and argues for consideration of the skin as a site where bodies take form - already written upon but open to endless re-inscription.
Individual chapters consider such issues as the significance of piercing, tattooing and tanning, the assault of self harm upon the skin, the relation between body painting and the land among the indigenous people of Australia and the cultural economy of fur in Canada. Pierced, mutilated and marked, mortified and glorified, scarred by disease and stretched and enveloping the skin of another in pregnancy, skin is seen here as both a boundary and a point of connection - the place where one touched and is touched by others, both the most private of experiences and the most public marker of a raced, sexed and national history.

Series Information:
International Library of Sociology

Stories of cancer are full of monsters and marvels; the monstrousness of the disease and the treatments, the marvels of the cures and the saved lives. Embodying our deepest fears, cancer is seen as a disease of society as well as of the individual, of the spirit as well as of the body. People who have cancer are bombarded with competing explanations of their conditions: it is genetically inherited; it is environmentally produced; it is the result of their personality.
Teratologies is a distinctively female look at how cancer is imagined and experienced in contemporary society. Beginning with powerful personal accounts of her own illness, Jackie Stacey explores changing beliefs about the causes of, and the cures for cancer in both biomedicine and its increasingly popular alternative counterparts. She also uses the case of cancer as a way of understanding some of the wider forces of contemporary cultural change.

In a historical investigation of the pleasures of cinema, Star Gazing puts female spectators back into theories of spectatorship. Combining film theory with a rich body of ethnographic research, Jackie Stacey investigates how female spectators understood Hollywood stars in the 1940's and 1950's. Her study challenges the universalism of psychoanalytic theories of female spectatorship which have dominated the feminist agenda within film studies for over two decades.
Drawing on letters and questionnaires from over three hundred keen cinema-goers, Stacey investigates the significance of certain Hollywood stars in women's memories of wartime and postwar Britain. Three key processes of spectatorship - escapism, identification and consumption - are explored in detail in terms of their multiple and changing meanings for female spectators at this time. Star Gazing demonstrates the importance of cultural and national location for the meanings of female spectatorship, giving a new direction to questions of popular culture and female desire.

Addressing issues of long-standing concern, but from new perspectives, this book contributes to existing key debates about sexuality, paid work, the development process, equal opportunities legislation, lesbian history and women's writing. Extending beyond disciplinary boundaries many of the contributions address issues such as the politics and practice of women's studies, and the specificity of women's oppression within particular national and international contexts. Theoretical, epistemological and methodological questions are analyzed from a variety of perspectives which frequently defy existing categorizations. Moving beyond the previous positions of Marxist, radical or liberal feminism many contributions challenge the boundaries of existing debates and set new agendas for the future. Whilst recognizing the achievements of women's studies, this collection contributes to the continuing process of critical self-reflection.

Addressing issues of long-standing concern, but from new perspectives, this book contributes to existing key debates about sexuality, paid work, the development process, equal opportunities legislation, lesbian history and women's writing. Extending beyond disciplinary boundaries many of the contributions address issues such as the politics and practice of women's studies, and the specificity of women's oppression within particular national and international contexts. Theoretical, epistemological and methodological questions are analyzed from a variety of perspectives which frequently defy existing categorizations. Moving beyond the previous positions of Marxist, radical or liberal feminism many contributions challenge the boundaries of existing debates and set new agendas for the future. Whilst recognizing the achievements of women's studies, this collection contributes to the continuing process of critical self-reflection.

An anthology of recent work in the spheres of feminism and cultural studies, this text is divided into three areas, namely representation and ideology, science and technology, and Thatcherism and the enterprise culture. The authors argue for the amalgamation of these areas in the analysis of contemporary culture, stating that this combination would be of value. Students of cultural studies, women's studies, sociology, film studies, literature and popular culture may find this book of interest.

First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

After decades of feminism and deconstruction, romance remains firmly in place as a central preoccupation in the lives of most women. Divorce rates skyrocket, the traditional family is challenged from all sides, and yet romance seems indestructible. In terms of its cultural representation, the popularity of romance also appears unchallenged. Popular fiction, Hollywood cinema, television soap-operas, and the media in general all display a seemingly bottomless appetite for romantic subjects. The trappings of classic romance--white weddings, love songs, Valentine's Day--are as commercially viable as ever.

In this anthology of original essays, romance is revisited from a wide spectrum of perspectives, not just in fiction and film but in a whole range of cultural phenomena. Essays range over such issues as Valentine's Day, interracial relationships, medieval erotic visions and modern romance fiction, the relationship between the lesbian poet H.D. and Bryher, the pervasive whiteness of romantic desire, lesbian erotica in the age of AIDS, and the public romance of Charles and Diana.

What might the cinema tell us about how and why the prospect of cloning disturbs our most profound ideas about gender, sexuality, difference, and the body? In "The Cinematic Life of the Gene," the pioneering feminist film theorist Jackie Stacey argues that as a cultural technology of imitation, cinema is uniquely situated to help us theorize "the genetic imaginary," the constellation of fantasies that genetic engineering provokes. Since the mid-1990s there has been remarkable innovation in genetic engineering and a proliferation of films structured by anxieties about the changing meanings of biological and cultural reproduction. Bringing analyses of several of these films into dialogue with contemporary cultural theory, Stacey demonstrates how the cinema animates the tropes and enacts the fears at the heart of our genetic imaginary. She engages with film theory; queer theories of desire, embodiment, and kinship; psychoanalytic theories of subject formation; and debates about the reproducibility of the image and the shift from analog to digital technologies.

Stacey examines the body-horror movies "Alien: Resurrection" and "Species" in light of Jean Baudrillard's apocalyptic proclamations about cloning and "the hell of the same," and she considers the art-house thrillers "Gattaca" and "Code 46" in relation to ideas about imitation, including feminist theories of masquerade, postcolonial conceptualizations of mimicry, and queer notions of impersonation. Turning to "Teknolust" and "Genetic Admiration," independent films by feminist directors, she extends Walter Benjamin's theory of aura to draw an analogy between the replication of biological information and the reproducibility of the art object. Stacey suggests new ways to think about those who are not what they appear to be, the problem of determining identity in a world of artificiality, and the loss of singularity amid unchecked replication.

After decades of feminism and deconstruction, romance remains firmly in place as a central preoccupation in the lives of most women. Romance is still the most compelling discourse by which any one of us is inscribed. This critical collection revisits romance across the disciplines, not just in fiction and film, but in a whole range of cultural phenomena. Essays range over such issues as the royal marriage, Valentine's Day, inter-racial relationships and the romance of the scientific quest. All kinds of relationships are brought under the lens of feminist cultural theory, from sex and the single nun to Yukio Mishima, from snuglet puglet to safer sex. Lynne Pearce is the author of "Feminism and the Politics of Reading". Jackie Stacey is the author of "Star Gazing and Female Spectatorship".

Understandings of globalization have been little explored in relation to gender or related concerns such as identity, subjectivity and the body. This book contrasts `the natural' and `the global' as interpretive strategies, using approaches from feminist cultural theory. The book begins by introducing the central themes: ideas of the natural; questions of scale and context posed by globalization and their relation to forms of cultural production; the transformation of genealogy; and the emergence of interest in definitions of life and life forms. The authors explores these questions through a number of case studies including Benneton advertising, Jurassic Park, The Body Shop, British Airways, Monsanto and Dolly the Sheep. In order to respecify the `nature, culture and gender' concerns of two decades of feminist theory, this highly original book reflects, hypothesizes and develops new interpretive possibilities within established feminist analytical frames.