The Feminist Film Philosophy Reader

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Edited by Lucy Bolton

Type

Essays

Subject

Sociology

Keywords

feminism, philosophy

Publishing date

2026 (June 25, 2026)

Publisher

Bloomsbury Academic

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 440 pages
7 ¾ x 10 inches (19.5 x 25.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-83902-657-7

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Book Presentation:
From Virginia Woolf to bell hooks, women have written, thought about and worked with film, images, and the visual in philosophical ways since the inception of cinema, and yet their names are generally missing from the discipline of film philosophy. This anthology brings together, for the first time, a collection of writings by women philosophers, writers and thinkers on philosophical aspects of film and visual culture. The collection of texts in this book demonstrates a century of women writing about the visual, considering aesthetics, politics, and challenging dominant ideologies. All can inspire us to think anew about film and visual cultures.

Feminist Film Philosophy re-frames the body of work available to film philosophers in schools, universities, and cinema audiences, and stages a long-overdue intervention in the field, thereby enabling the development of the discipline in important and vital ways.

About the Author:
Lucy Bolton is Professor of Film Philosophy at Queen Mary, University of London, UK. She is author of Contemporary Cinema and the Philosophy of Iris Murdoch (2019), and Film and Female Consciousness: Irigaray, Cinema and Thinking Women (2011).

Press Reviews:
"This comprehensive and meticulous labour of love, edited with such rigour and care by Lucy Bolton, will be a primary resource for scholars, students and practitioners. I will be using it as the key text on several of my own courses and I am sure other scholars working in the fields of feminism and visual culture will do so, too. A feminist feast that is both timely and pivotal within film studies and beyond." ―Anna Backman Rogers, Professor of Aesthetics, Culture and Feminist Theory, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and author of Still Life: Notes on Barbara Loden's Wanda (2020) & Sofia Coppola: The Politics of Visual Pleasure (2019)

"This first-of-its-kind collection brings together essential voices in feminist film philosophy, skillfully weaving foundational and contemporary perspectives into a cohesive whole. Lucy Bolton demonstrates impressive scholarly judgment in creating a resource that makes complex philosophical concepts both accessible and intellectually rigorous. This thoughtfully curated reader will be an invaluable addition to courses exploring the rich intersection of feminist theory and film studies." ―Kelli Fuery, Professor of Creative and Cultural Industries, Chapman University, USA, and author of Ambiguous Cinema: From Simone de Beauvoir to Feminist Film-Phenomenology (2022)

"A superbly curated selection of writings, cutting across fields and time periods, deepens understanding of feminist film philosophy and the many forms of feminist thought and practice in relation to film. With an eye towards what it means to study film at this moment in history, this reader introduces likely and unlikely feminist perspectives that unsettle established canons of thought in film. Each section of this well-crafted reader takes up specific themes - dominant imaginaries, time, bodies - that infuse both energy and rigour into the study of film, bringing questions of aesthetics and politics into conversation with the wider domains of ethics, visibility and power. Provocative and inspiring, this essential reading asserts that a serious appreciation of film in the 21st century cannot be sustained without recourse to the urgent, creative and on-going work of feminism." ―Aparna Sharma, Film Professor, Department of World Arts and Cultures/ Dance, University of California Los Angeles, USA

See the publisher website: Bloomsbury Academic