Screening Motherhood in Contemporary World Cinema
by Asma Sayed
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Book Presentation:
Using a variety of critical and theoretical approaches, the contributing scholars to this collection analyze culturally specific and globally held attitudes about mothers and mothering, as represented in world cinema. Examining films from a range of countries including Afghanistan, India, Iran, Eastern Europe, Canada, and the United States, the various chapters contextualize the socio-cultural realities of motherhood as they are represented on screen, and explore the maternal figure as she has been glamorized and celebrated, while simultaneously subjected to public scrutiny. Collectively, this scholarly investigation provides insights into where women’s struggles converge, while also highlighting the dramatically different realities of women around the globe.
About the Author:
Asma Sayed, PhD, researches Canadian literature in the context of global multiculturalism. Her current research focuses on Islamophobia and the image of Muslim women in popular culture, particularly in Indian cinema. She teaches women’s and gender studies, cultural studies, communication studies and comparative literature at a number of western Canadian universities. Her recent edited works include M. G. Vassanji: Essays on His Works (2014), Writing Diaspora: Transnational Memories, Identities and Cultures (2014), and World on a Maple Leaf: a Treasury of Cana- dian Multicultural Folktales (2011).
Press Reviews:
From Canada to Iran, from Germany to Argentina, from science fiction to animation, from experimental to mainstream, Screening Motherhood in Contemporary World Cinema brings the representation of motherhood and mothering on screen to the forefront. Sketching out an ambitious argument about the ability of the popular to promote serious subversion of the mainstream, it parses ways in which the mother-daughter duo can break a patriarchal stranglehold. This book brings welcome critical scrutiny to a range of films and concerns not widely circulated and, in so doing, opens a conversation calling for responses and examples from other quarters. A valuable addition for all concerned with film, gender and women's studies. ?Gail Vanstone is an associate professor at York University, Toronto and the author of D is for Daring Screening Motherhood in Contemporary World Cinema captures the maternal on film and in women's lives by offering critical reflections on cross-cultural representations and realities of motherhood. Are representations of mothers coloured by race, connected to nation, or situated in class terms? Are images of weak, submissive, and sacrificial mothers still predominant in cinema from around the world? From Brave and Harry Potter to Mercedes Mirabal and Bollywood, case studies from North to Latin America, and unlike other examinations of motherhood in cinema, Screening Motherhood takes a global view, covering explorations of mothers in multiple cinematic traditions. This collection extends the conversations taking place in world cinema, feminist film studies, and mothering scholarship by shining a spotlight on maternal representation in film globally. The chapters take film as a cultural document, exposing how mothers on the big and small screen re-inscribe ?intensive mother? norms but also disrupt the discourse. Asma Sayed illustrates how on/off screen the lives of mothers cross-culturally are complex, dynamic, and open to change. Scholars and film lovers will be eager to engage with the text and the possibilities Screening Motherhood opens up for women, especially mothers, to participate in telling their own stories. ?Joanne Minaker, Associate Professor, MacEwan University, Edmonton
See the publisher website: Demeter Press
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