Books in French are on www.livres-cinema.info
Young Women, Girls and Postfeminism in Contemporary British Film
by Sarah Hill
(0 vote)Average rating:
| 0 | rating |  = We can do without |
| 0 | rating |  = Good book |
| 0 | rating |  = Excellent book |
| 0 | rating |  = Unique / a reference |
Your rating: -
Book Presentation:
In the 21st century, films about the lives and experiences of girls and young women have become increasingly visible. Yet, British cinema’s engagement with contemporary girlhood has - unlike its Hollywood counterpart - been largely ignored until now. Sarah Hill’s Young Women, Girls and Postfeminism in Contemporary British Film provides the first book-length study of how young femininity has been constructed, both in films like the St. Trinians franchise and by critically acclaimed directors like Andrea Arnold, Carol Morley and Lone Scherfig. Hill offers new ways to understand how postfeminism informs British cinema and how it is adapted to fit its specific geographical context. By interrogating UK cinema through this lens, Hill paints a diverse and distinctive portrait of modern femininity and consolidates the important academic links between film, feminist media and girlhood studies.
About the Author:
Sarah Hill is Early Career Academic Fellow in the School of Arts and Cultures at Newcastle University, UK. Her research interests include British cinema, feminist media studies, female authorship and girlhood.Claire Nally is Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature in the Department of English Literature, Linguistics and Creative Writing at Northumbria University, UK. She is the author of Steampunk: Gender, Subculture and the Neo-Victorian (Bloomsbury, 2019), co-editor or Bloomsbury Library of Gender and Popular Culture and Deputy Editor (including reviews) of the open access journal C21 Literature.Angela Smith is Professor of Language and Culture at the University of Sunderland, UK. She has written numerous articles and book chapters on media discourses, gender, the portrayal of immigrants and the representation of politicians.
Press Reviews:
"Given its centering of contemporary representations of girlhood in British cinema, Sarah Hill's monograph is a welcome addition to girls' media studies, which heretofore has been dominated by research on American texts, not to mention British film studies, which has focused overwhelmingly on adult-centered texts. With close attention to nationally specific class and gender politics, as well as creative traditions and transformations, this book offers new ways for understanding recent mediated depictions of British girlhood within their specific industrial and sociocultural contexts." ―Mary Celeste Kearney, University of Notre Dame, USA, and author of Girls Make Media and editor of Mediated Girlhoods
"In this important and refreshing examination of girlhood in contemporary British cinema, Sarah Hill both valuably contributes to and disrupts the existing work on postfeminism, highlighting the need for context-specificity in feminist understandings of postfeminist film culture. Drawing attention to a significant body of girl films dismissed by critics as trivial, and overshadowed by the common academic focus on US cinema, this book reveals their peculiarly British inflection of postfeminist femininity. With a lucid and accessible writing style, Hill rightly throws into question the common-held assumptions of sparkle, glamour and cliques that we associate with onscreen girlhood in order to show the dynamic and diverse depiction of contemporary young femininity in British film." ―Melanie Kennedy, Lecturer in Media and Communication, University of Leicester, UK
"Sarah Hill provides an essential account of contemporary British cinema's engagement with youth and femininity that will be of enormous value to scholars of both girlhood studies and British film studies. Examining the national specificities of a number of different postfeminist tropes and conventions, Hill offers insightful close readings of a diverse range of recent British films with young female protagonists, from historical dramas to dance films, and draws out their underlying connections. Young Women, Girls and Postfeminism in Contemporary British Film marks an important and original intervention in the interconnected fields of gender studies and film studies." ―Melanie Williams, Film Historian, University of East Anglia, UK
See the publisher website: Bloomsbury Academic
> On a related topic:
Spinsters, Widows and Chars (2023)
The Ageing Woman in British Film
Subject: Countries > Great Britain
British Women Amateur Filmmakers (2018)
National Memories and Global Identities
by Annamaria Motrescu-Mayes and Heather Norris Nicholson
Subject: Countries > Great Britain
Femininity in the Frame (2009)
Women and 1950s British Popular Cinema
by Melanie Bell
Subject: Countries > Great Britain
British Women's Cinema (2009)
Dir. Melanie Bell and Melanie Williams
Subject: Countries > Great Britain
Pepsi and the Pill (2022)
Motherhood, Politics and Film in Britain and France, 1958–1969
Off to the Pictures (2016)
Cinemagoing, Women's Writing and Movie Culture in Interwar Britain
by Lisa Stead
Subject: Sociology
Nouvelles Femmes (2025)
Modern Women of the French New Wave and Their Enduring Contribution to Cinema
Ethical Encounters (2022)
Transnational Feminism, Human Rights, and War Cinema in Bangladesh
Subject: Countries > Southeast Asia
Back
