Library Research Guides: Media Studies: Home

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Welcome to the Media Studies subject guide for Indiana University Bloomington

We're glad you're here. This guide contains information pertaining to the field of media studies. Here you'll find featured content, helpful resources and services for scholars, instructional support information, research tips, new titles, and recommended resources.

The subject specialist and collection manager for this area is nicholae cline. If you would like to contact them, please use the profile box located on the left-hand side of this page. If you would like to request a purchase for our collections, you can use this form.

About Media Studies

Media Studies refers to the broad range of interdisciplinary subjects focusing on media culture and production. This may include media theory; game studies & design; communication & culture; telecommunications & communication science; media production, design, & aesthetics; mass media & popular culture; film & cinema studies, including the history & culture thereof; identity & representation; policy, copyright, and other legal frameworks; media ecology; journalism and the news, public relations and advertising, among many others. This subject area may also maintain commitments to sociocultural concerns relevant to information technology, such as the surveillance economy, social media, and other forms of technologically mediated interactions.

Media studies may and often does intersect with other fields, including philosophy, literary & social theory, art history & criticism, and cultural studies, et al.

This guide comprises resources and information relevant to students within the IU Media School, as well as those engaging with media, generally, in their research. Scholars of media often find themselves working with and across a variety frameworks, both regional and global; formats, both analog (film, videocassettes/DVDs) and digital; and styles, from radio programming to movies, from television to video games, and beyond.

To learn more about the IU Media School, please visit their website.

Featured | Spotlight on Feminist Media Studies

This year for Women’s History Month, we are highlighting feminist media studies. Feminist media studies is a discipline that applies feminist approaches to the fields of media and communication studies. This guide will provide you with resources for researching in this field—we have curated journals, academic books, and textbooks in the area. We have also created overviews of some common, related media studies terms that you might use in your everyday life including the Bechdel Test, the Male Gaze, and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Explore this guide to lean about the origins of these concepts alongside criticism of these terms.

We have also included non-academic sources such as blogs, substacks, films, and television. These sources, along with scholarly selections, often incorporate intersectional approaches to the field of Feminist Media Studies including queer theory and critical race theory.

See below for a list of events/ways to experience (feminist) media at IU and in Bloomington:

IU Cinema:
Cicada Cinema: a pop-up movie theater in Bloomington, IN with the mission of providing high-quality screenings of underrepresented cinema—the old, the new, and the locally created. Volunteer run and community driven, Cicada Cinema aims to create an independent space for film and film lovers.

Images of Filmmakers/directors (from left to right): Jessie Maple, Greta Gerwig, Ava DuVernay, Chloé Zhao, and Jane Campion

Feminist Media Studies by Editors: Cynthia Carter (Cardiff University), Isabel Molina-Guzmán (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
Feminist Media Studies provides a transdisciplinary, transnational forum for researchers pursuing feminist approaches to the field of media and communication studies, with attention to the historical, philosophical, cultural, social, political, and economic dimensions and analysis of sites including print and electronic media, film and the arts, and new media technologies. Feminist Media Studies especially encourages submissions based on original, empirical inquiry of the social experiences of audiences, citizens, workers, etc. and how these are structured by political, economic and cultural circumstances. The journal invites contributions from feminist researchers working across a range of disciplines and conceptual perspectives.
Camera Obscura by Duke University Press
Camera Obscura provides a forum for scholarship and debate on feminism, culture, and media studies. The journal encourages contributions in areas such as the conjunctions of gender, race, class, and sexuality with audiovisual culture; new histories and theories of film, television, video, and digital media; and politically engaged approaches to a range of media practices.
differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies
differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies first appeared in 1989 at the moment of a critical encounter—a head-on collision, one might say—of theories of difference (primarily Continental) and the politics of diversity (primarily American). In the ensuing years, the journal has established a critical forum where the problematic of differences is explored in texts ranging from the literary and the visual to the political and social. differences highlights theoretical debates across the disciplines that address the ways concepts and categories of difference—notably but not exclusively gender—operate within culture.
Another Gaze by Daniella Shreir (Founder-Editor), Missouri Williams (Co-editor)
Another Gaze is a feminist film journal, founded in January 2016 to provide nuanced criticism about women and queers as filmmakers, protagonists and spectators.
See also: Another Gaze Editions, a new publishing imprint created by Missouri Williams and Daniella Shreir, the editors of Another Gaze. The imprint focuses on new translations and editions of works of fiction and non-fiction by women filmmakers, by women writers whose texts were the basis for well-known films, collections of writing by women film critics from around the world, and monographs of single films and filmmakers
Feminist Media Histories by Jennifer Bean (editor)
Feminist Media Histories publishes original research, oral histories, primary documents, conference reports, and archival news on radio, television, film, video, digital technologies, and other media across a range of historical periods and global contexts. Inter-medial and trans-national in its approach, Feminist Media Histories examines the historical role gender has played in varied media technologies, and documents women’s engagements with these media as audiences, users and consumers, creators and executives, critics, writers and theorists, technicians and laborers, educators, activists, and librarians.
Feminist Encounters : A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics
Founded in 2017, Feminist Encounters is a journal committed to argument and debate, in the tradition of historical feminist movements. In the wake of the growing rise of the Right across the world, openly neo-fascist national sentiments, and rising conservative populism, we feminists all over the world are needing to remobilise our energies to protect and advance gender rights. Feminist Encounters provides a forum for feminist theorists, scholars, and activists to communicate with each other, to better educate ourselves on international issues and thus promote more global understanding, and to enhance our critical tools for fighting for human rights.
Women: a cultural reiew
Women: a cultural review explores the role and representation of gender and sexuality in arts and culture, with a particular focus on the contemporary world. The journal analyses the theory and politics of sexual difference in literature, the media, history, education, law, philosophy, psychoanalysis and the performing and visual arts. The journal has two Special Issues a year, and one Open Forum. In addition to articles, each issue has a substantial review section and a listings section for new and recent titles in the field of gender and culture. The journal also regularly features interviews with figures who have made particularly significant interventions in current debates about gender and feminism. Articles are invited for Special Issues and the Open Forum from both male and female contributors.
Women's Studies in Communication
Women's Studies in Communication ( WSIC ) provides a feminist forum for diverse research, reviews, and commentary addressing the relationships between communication and gender. WSIC invites contributions that advance our understanding of the intersections of gender and race, ethnicity, nationality, ability, sexuality, and class, as well as the articulations between gendered performances, power, and representation in public culture. Topically and methodologically inclusive, WSIC publishes quantitative, qualitative, and critical communication scholarship drawing from a variety of areas including but not limited to interpersonal, organizational, performance, rhetoric, media, and cultural studies. The editor is committed to promoting the best work that falls within these parameters and also to encouraging the development of new voices and new projects that challenge conventions guiding communication scholarship. Feminist studies concerning queer and transgender politics, masculinity, dis/ability, labor, transnationalism, postcolonialism, and critical race theory are especially encouraged at this time.
Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory
Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory publishes scholarly essays from interdisciplinary feminist perspectives. For us, “women” and “performance” denote not simply what we study but how we study it—that is, not preconceived objects of analysis, but rather an open assembly of political, ethical, and aesthetic orientations, feminism chief among them. We encourage dialogues among various fields of performance scholarship, including theater and performance studies, dance studies, music history and criticism, ethnography, new and digital media, cinema studies, and cultural studies; as well as queer, critical race, and post- and decolonial theory. Working with/in this disciplinary hybridity, we explore critiques of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, dis/ability, technology, nation, and capitalism.
Media Report to Women
Media Report to Women stands alone in providing information on all types of media—television, cable, film, radio, newspapers, magazines, newsletters, the Internet and other emerging media—and the way in which they depict women and issues of interest to women. Founded in 1972, Media Report to Women pioneered discussion of the ways in which advertising, print and TV journalism, and entertainment programming depict the lives of women. We also report on how audiences respond to those images, and what effects these images have on women and girls, men and boys. We expanded our coverage, taking the newsletter from 12 to 24 pages to provide as much information as possible on women and media. We now publish full-length research papers in every issue.

Feminist Film Theory by Sue Thornham (Editor)
ISBN: 0814782442
Publication Date: 1999-04-01
Maps the major developments and debates in feminist film theory. For the past twenty-five years, cinema has been a vital terrain on which feminist debates about culture, representation, and identity have been fought. This anthology charts the history of those debates, bringing together the key, classic essays in feminist film theory. Feminist Film Theory maps the impact of major theoretical developments on this growing field-from structuralism and psychoanalysis in the 1970s, to post-colonial theory, queer theory, and postmodernism in the 1990s. Covering a wide range of topics, including oppressive images, "woman" as fetishized object of desire, female spectatorship, and the cinematic pleasures of black women and lesbian women, Feminist Film Theory is an indispensable reference for scholars and students in the field. Contributors include Judith Butler, Carol J. Clover, Barbara Creed, Michelle Citron, Mary Ann Doane, Teresa De Lauretis, Jane Gaines, Christine Gledhill, Molly Haskell, bell hooks, Claire Johnston, Annette Kuhn, Julia Lesage, Judith Mayne, Tania Modleski, Laura Mulvey, B. Ruby Rich, Kaja Silverman, Sharon Smith, Jackie Stacey, Janet Staiger, Anna Marie Taylor, Valerie Walkerdine, and Linda Williams.
Feminist Media Studies by Alison Harvey
ISBN: 9781509524471
Publication Date: 2019-12-04
Feminist Media Studies is a cutting-edge introduction to the core and emerging theories, methods, and approaches in a field that has blossomed over the past twenty-five years. Adopting an intersectional approach—a framework concerning the interconnected character of oppression based on gender, race, class, and other constructed identities—Alison Harvey takes a global view of gendered practices in and around the media. She provides an accessible overview of classical and contemporary issues in media culture by exploring the past, present, and future of feminist media studies, accounting for changes in the media landscape, from digital technologies and globalized media systems to emergent inequalities, discourses, and practices. By engaging with research from a diverse body of scholarship, this book situates feminist media studies as vital to researching and analyzing a range of significant issues. The go-to textbook for a new generation of students, as well as an important resource for scholars, Feminist Media Studies is both an exciting invitation to the field and a passionate call to arms.
Women Artists, Feminism and the Moving Image: Contexts and Practices by Lucy Reynolds (Editor)
ISBN: 9781350203112
Publication Date: 2020-11-26
A diverse range of leading scholars, activists, archivists and artists explore the histories, practices and concerns of women making film and video across the world, from the pioneering German animator Lotte Reiniger, to the influential African American filmmaker Julie Dash, and the provocative Scottish contemporary artist Rachel Maclean. Opening with a foreword from the film theorist Laura Mulvey and a poem by the artist filmmaker Lis Rhodes, the book traces the legacies of early feminist interventions into the moving image and the ways in which these have been re-configured in the very different context of today. Reflecting and building upon the practices of recuperation that continue to play a vital role in feminist art practice and scholarship, contributors discuss topics such as how multiculturalism is linked to experimental and activist film history, the function and nature of the essay film, feminist curatorial practices and much more. This book transports readers across diverse cultural contexts and geographical contours, addressing complex narratives of subjectivity, representation and labour, while juxtaposing cultures of film, video and visual arts practice often held apart.
Feminist Film Studies by Karen Hollinger
ISBN: 9780415575287
Publication Date: 2012-08-27
Feminist Film Studies is a readable, yet comprehensive textbook for introductory classes in feminist film theory and criticism. Karen Hollinger provides an accessible overview of women's representation and involvement in film, complemented by analyses of key texts that illustrate major topics in the field. Key areas include: a brief history of the development of feminist film theory the theorization of the male gaze and the female spectator women in genre films and literary adaptations, the female biopic feminism and avant-garde and documentary film, women as auteurs, lesbian representation, women in Third Cinema. Each chapter includes a "Films in Focus" section, which analyzes key texts related to the chapter's major topic, including examples from classical Hollywood, world cinema, and the contemporary period. This book provides students in both film and gender/women's studies with a clear introduction to the field of feminist film theory and criticism.
Feminist Media by Elke Zobl (Editor); Ricarda Düeke (Editor)
ISBN: 9783837621570
Publication Date: 2012-09-27
While feminists have long recognised the importance of self-managed, alternative media to transport their messages, to challenge the status quo, and to spin novel social processes, this topic has been an under-researched area. Hence, this book explores the processes of women's and feminist media production in the context of participatory spaces, technology, and cultural citizenship. The collection is composed of theoretical analyses and critical case studies. It highlights contemporary alternative feminist media in general as well as blogs, zines, culture jamming, and street art.
Independent Female Filmmakers by Michele Meek (Editor)
ISBN: 9780815373049
Publication Date: 2019-01-11
Independent Female Filmmakers collects original and previously published essays, interviews, and manifestos from some of the most defining and groundbreaking independent female filmmakers of the last 40 years. Featuring material from the seminal magazine The Independent Film and Video Monthly—a leading publication for independent filmmakers for several decades—as well as new interviews conducted with the filmmakers, this book, edited by Michele Meek, presents a unique perspective into the ethnically and culturally diverse voices of women filmmakers whose films span narrative, documentary, and experimental genres and whose work remains integral to independent film history from the 1970s to the present. Independent Female Filmmakers also includes a biographical profile of each filmmaker, as well as an online resource with links to additional interviews and a sample course syllabus.
Current Perspectives in Feminist Media Studies by Lisa McLaughlin (Editor); Cynthia Carter (Editor)
ISBN: 9780415540117
Publication Date: 2012-09-27
Current Perspectives in Feminist Media Studies features contributions written by a diverse group of stellar feminist scholars from around the world. Each contributor has authored a brief, thought-provoking commentary on the current status and future directions of feminist media studies. Although contributors write about numerous, discrete subjects within the field of feminist media studies, their various ideas and concerns can be merged into six broad, overlapping subject areas that allow us to gain a strong sense of the expansive contours of current feminist communication scholarship and activism which the authors have identified as generally illustrative of the field. Specifically, authors encourage feminist media scholars to engage with issues of political economy, new ICTs and cybercultures as well as digital media policy, media and identity, sexuality and sexualization, and postfeminism. They stress that feminist media scholars must broaden and deepen our theoretical frameworks and methodologies so as to provide a better sense of the conceptual complexities of feminist media studies and empirical realities of contemporary media forms, practices and audiences. This book was originally published as a special issue of Feminist Media Studies.
Latin American Women Filmmakers by Deborah Martin (Editor); Julian Ross (Series edited by); Deborah Shaw (Editor); Lúcia Nagib (Series edited by)
ISBN: 9781784537111
Publication Date: 2017-03-23
Latin American women filmmakers have achieved unprecedented international prominence in recent years. Notably political in their approach, figures such as Lucrecia Martel, Claudia Llosa and Bertha Navarro have created innovative and often challenging films, enjoying global acclaim from critics and festival audiences alike. They undeniably mark a 'moment' for Latin American cinema.Bringing together distinguished scholars in the field—and prefaced by B. Ruby Rich—this is a much-needed account and analysis of the rise of female-led film in Latin America. Chapters detail the collaboration that characterises Latin American women's filmmaking—in many ways distinct from the largely 'Third Cinema' auteurism from the region—as well as the transnational production contexts, unique aesthetics and socio-political landscape of the key industry figures. Through close attention to the particular features of national film cultures, from women's documentary filmmaking in Chile to comedic critique in Brazil, and from US Latina screen culture to the burgeoning popularity of Peruvian film, this timely study demonstrates the remarkable possibilities for film in the region. This book will allow scholars and students of Latin American cinema and culture, as well as industry professionals, a deeper understanding of the emergence and impact of the filmmakers and their work, which has particular relevance for contemporary debates on feminism.
Films and Feminism: Essays in Indian Cinema by Jasbir Jain (Editor); Sudha Rai (Editor); Institute for Research in Interdisciplinary Studies (Jaipur, India) Staff (Contribution by)
ISBN: 8131607127
Publication Date: 2015-08-01
Cinema/film reaches a much wider audience than literature, as it moves across the barriers of class, literacy, religion, and language. Not only does it reflect reality, it also constructs reality. The reach and impact of cinema/film makes it imperative to work through the rhetoric and melodrama of the medium to unearth the subtleties and ambiguities which lie within. Films and Feminism: Essays in Indian Cinema explores both mainstream and parallel cinema for an analysis of 'the woman' image, the idea of romance, the imposition and defiance of the patriarchal order, and a woman's journey towards self-definition. With a new introduction, this second edition captures the shifts that have taken place since the original publication. With four new essays supplementing the earlier twenty four, the book examines the shifts in film techniques and film audiences, the blurring of the line between alternative and commercial cinema, and women's image of themselves. Largely focusing on Hindi cinema, there is also a reflection of Bengali and Kannada cinema. The volume enlarges the scope of inquiry into feminist concerns and feminine representation, making a significant contribution to film, gender, and literary studies, as it opens up multiple dimensions of inquiry.
Networked Feminisms: Activist Assemblies and Digital Practices by Shana MacDonald (Editor); Brianna I. Wiens (Editor); Michelle MacArthur (Editor); Milena Radzikowska (Editor)
ISBN: 9781793613790
Publication Date: 2021-11-16
The collection of essays outlines how feminists employ a variety of online platforms, practices, and tools to create spaces of solidarity and to articulate a critical politics that refuses popular forms of individual, consumerist, white feminist empowerment in favor of collective, tangible action. Including scholars and activists from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, these essays help to catalog the ways in which feminists are organizing online to mobilize different feminist, queer, trans, disability, reproductive justice, and racial equality movements. Together, these perspectives offer a comprehensive overview of how feminists are employing the tools of the internet for political change. Grounded in intersectional feminism—a perspective that attends to the interrelatedness of power and oppression based on race, class, gender, ability, sexuality, and other identities—this book gathers provocations, analyses, creative explorations, theorizations, and case studies of networked feminist activist practices. In doing so, this collection archives important work already done within feminist digital cultures and acts as a vital blueprint for future feminist action.
Media Crossroads: Intersections of Space and Identity in Screen Cultures by Paula J. Massood (Editor); Angel Daniel Matos (Editor); Pamela Robertson Wojcik (Editor)
ISBN: 9781478010616
Publication Date: 2021-03-26
The contributors to Media Crossroads examine space and place in media as they intersect with sexuality, race, ethnicity, age, class, and ability. Considering a wide range of film, television, video games, and other media, the authors show how spaces—from the large and fantastical to the intimate and virtual—are shaped by the social interactions and intersections staged within them. The highly teachable essays include analyses of media representations of urban life and gentrification, the ways video games allow users to adopt an experiential understanding of space, the intersection of the regulation of bodies and spaces, and how style and aesthetics can influence intersectional thinking. Whether interrogating the construction of Portland as a white utopia in Portlandia or the link between queerness and the spatial design and gaming mechanics in the Legend of Zelda video game series, the contributors deepen understanding of screen cultures in ways that redefine conversations around space studies in film and media.
Gender, Race, and Class in Media by William E. Yousman (Editor); Lori Bindig Yousman (Editor); Gail Dines (Editor); Jean McMahon Humez (Editor)
ISBN: 9781544393421
Publication Date: 2020-08-27
Gender, Race, and Class in Media provides students a comprehensive and critical introduction to media studies by encouraging them to analyze their own media experiences and interests. Editors Bill Yousman, Lori Bindig Yousman, Gail Dines, and Jean McMahon Humez explore some of the most important forms of today's popular culture—including the Internet, social media, television, films, music, and advertising—in three distinct but related areas of investigation: the political economy of production, textual analysis, and audience response. Multidisciplinary issues of power related to gender, race, and class are integrated into a wide range of articles examining the economic and cultural implications of mass media as institutions. Reflecting the rapid evolution of the field, the Sixth Edition includes 18 new readings that enhance the richness, sophistication, and diversity that characterizes contemporary media scholarship.
The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication by Karen Ross (Editor-In-Chief)
ISBN: 9781119429128
Publication Date: 2020-10-20
The first major reference work on gender and media—covering a broad range of gender-focused topics. The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication comprises more than 250 entries by an international team of both established and emerging scholars in the field. This innovative resource explores how gender is represented in media, who produces the content, and the ways in which audiences receive and understand media messages. The contributors offer original insights on diverse aspects of gender in film, television, visual media, social and digital media and more. Comprehensive and up-to-date, the encyclopedia places gender at the center of both historical and contemporary debates in the broad field of media and communication. This unique work presents contemporary scholarship on a vast array of topics including film biographies, TV, film and radio histories and genres, gender representation in news, and screen-based entertainment media. Includes essays which range from women film producers to the boy detective, from queer cinema to political communication, from gender and news to the racialized body, and many things in between. The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication is an indispensable reference for advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, instructors, and scholars in media, communication, gender studies, and related fields.

Lesbian Potentiality and Feminist Media in The 1970s by Rox Samer
ISBN: 9781478018025
Publication Date: 2022-03-18
In Lesbian Potentiality and Feminist Media in the 1970s, Rox Samer explores how 1970s feminists took up the figure of the lesbian in broad attempts to reimagine gender and sexuality. Samer turns to feminist film, video, and science fiction literature, offering a historiographical concept called "lesbian potentiality"—a way of thinking beyond what the lesbian was, in favor of how the lesbian signified what could have come to be. Samer shows how the labor of feminist media workers and fans put lesbian potentiality into movement. They see lesbian potentiality in feminist prison documentaries that theorize the prison industrial complex's racialized and gendered violence and give image to Black feminist love politics and freedom dreaming. Lesbian potentiality also circulates through the alternative spaces created by feminist science fiction and fantasy fanzines like The Witch and the Chameleon and Janus. It was here that author James Tiptree, Jr./Alice B. Sheldon felt free to do gender differently and inspired many others to do so in turn. Throughout, Samer embraces the perpetual reimagination of "lesbian" and the lesbian's former futures for the sake of continued, radical world-building.
Selfie Aesthetics: Seeing Trans Feminist Futures in Self-Representational Art by Nicole Erin Morse
ISBN: 9781478018148
Publication Date: 2022-04-22
In Selfie Aesthetics Nicole Erin Morse examines how trans feminine artists use selfies and self-representational art to explore transition, selfhood, and relationality. Morse contends that rather than being understood as shallow emblems of a narcissistic age, selfies can produce politically meaningful encounters between creators and viewers. Through close readings of selfies and other digital artworks by trans feminist artists, Morse details a set of formal strategies they call selfie aesthetics: doubling, improvisation, seriality, and nonlinear temporality. Morse traces these strategies in the work of Zackary Drucker, Vivek Shraya, Tourmaline, Alok Vaid-Menon, Zinnia Jones, and Natalie Wynn, showing how these artists present improvisational identities and new modes of performative resistance by conveying the materialities of trans life. Morse shows how the interaction between selfie creators and viewers constructs collective modes of being and belonging in ways that envision trans feminist futures. By demonstrating the aesthetic depth and political potential of selfie creation, distribution, and reception, Morse deepens understandings of gender performativity and trans experience.
Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film by Alix Beeston (Editor); Stefan Solomon (Editor)
ISBN: 9780520381476
Publication Date: 2023-06-06
This field-defining collection establishes unfinished film projects—abandoned, interrupted, lost, or open-ended—as rich and under-appreciated resources for feminist film and media studies. In deeply researched and creatively conceived chapters, scholars join with film practitioners in approaching the unfinished film as an ideal site for revealing the lived experiences, practical conditions, and institutional realities of women's film production across historical periods and national borders. Incomplete recovers projects and practices marginalized in film industries and scholarship alike, while also showing how feminist filmmakers have cultivated incompletion as an aesthetic strategy. Objects of loss and of possibility, incomplete films raise profound historiographical and ethical questions about the always unfinished project of film history, film spectatorship, and film studies.
A Queer Way of Feeling: Girl Fans and Personal Archives of Early Hollywood by Diana W. Anselmo
ISBN: 9780520299658
Publication Date: 2023-02-07
Gathering an unexplored archive of fan-made scrapbooks, letters, diaries, and photographs, A Queer Way of Feeling explores how, in the 1910s, girls coming of age in the United States used cinema to forge a foundational language of female nonconformity, intimacy, and kinship. Pasting cross-dressed photos on personal scrapbooks and making love to movie actresses in epistolary writing, adolescent girls from all walks of life stitched together established homoerotic conventions with an emergent syntax of film stardom to make sense of mental states, actions, and proclivities self-described as "queer" or "different from the norm." Material testimonies of a forgotten audience, these autobiographical artifacts show how early movie-loving girls engendered terminologies, communities, and creative practices that would become cornerstones of media fan reception and queer belonging.
Violated Frames: Armando Bó and Isabel Sarli's Sexploits by Victoria Ruetalo; Annie Sprinkle (Foreword by)
ISBN: 9780520380097
Publication Date: 2022-03-22
When Armando Bó and Isabel Sarli began making sexploitation films together in 1956, they provoked audiences by featuring explicit nudity that would increasingly become more audacious, constantly challenging contemporary norms. Their Argentine films developed a large and international fan base. Analyzing the couple's films and their subsequent censorship, Violated Frames develops a new, roughly constructed, and "bad" archive of relocated materials to debate questions of performance, authorship, stardom, sexuality, and circulation. Victoria Ruétalo situates Bó and Sarli's films amidst the popular culture and sexual norms in post-1955 Argentina, and explores these films through the lens of bodies engaged in labor and leisure in a context of growing censorship. Under Perón, manual labor produced an affect that fixed a specific type of body to the populist movement of Peronism: a type of body that was young, lower-classed, and highly gendered. The excesses of leisure in exhibition, enjoyment, and ecstasy in Bó and Sarli's films interrupted the already fragmented film narratives of the day and created alternative sexual possibilities.
Their Own Best Creations by Annie Berke
ISBN: 9780520300798
Publication Date: 2022-01-04
A rich account that combines media-industry history and cultural studies, Their Own Best Creations looks at women writers' contributions to some of the most popular genres of postwar TV: comedy-variety, family sitcom, daytime soap, and suspense anthology. During the 1950s, when the commercial medium of television was still being defined, women writers navigated pressures at work, constructed public personas that reconciled traditional and progressive femininity, and asserted that a woman's point of view was essential to television as an art form. The shows they authored allegorize these professional and personal pressures and articulate a nascent second-wave feminist consciousness. Annie Berke brings to light the long-forgotten and under-studied stories of these women writers and crucially places them in the historical and contemporary record.
Recollecting Lotte Eisner by Naomi DeCelles
ISBN: 9780520388147
Publication Date: 2022-11-08
Recollecting Lotte Eisner provides the first in-depth examination of the remarkable transnational career of film journalist, archivist, and historian Lotte Eisner (1896-1983). From her early years as a film critic in interwar Berlin to her escape from prison in occupied France and from her role as chief curator at the Cinémathèque française to that as the mythic "collective conscience" of New German Cinema, Eisner was a prolific writer and lecturer and a pivotal voice in early film and media studies. Situated at the juncture of feminist media historiography and disciplinary intellectual history, this groundbreaking book is based on extensive multilingual archival research and the excavation of a rich corpus of previously overlooked materials. Introducing samples of Eisner's writing in translation, this volume makes some of the most important contributions of a foundational scholar in the field of film studies accessible for the first time to an English-language readership.
In and Out of Sight by Alix Beeston
ISBN: 9780190690168
Publication Date: 2018-01-04
In a post-digital media landscape tracked endlessly by streams and feeds of images, it is clearer than ever that photography is an art poised between arresting singularity and ambiguous plurality. Drawing on work in visual culture studies that emphasizes the interplay between still and moving images, In and Out of Sight provides a provocative new account of the relationship between photography and modernist literature—a literature which has long been considered to trace, in its formal experimentation, the influence of modern visual technologies. Making pioneering claims about the importance of photography to the writing of Gertrude Stein, Jean Toomer, John Dos Passos, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Alix Beeston traverses the history of photography in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In a series of richly detailed literary analyses, Beeston argues that the gaps and intervals of the composite literary text model the visual syntax of photography—as well as its silences, absences, and equivocations. In them, the social and political order of modernity is negotiated and reshaped. Moving in and out of these textual openings, In and Out of Sight pursues the fleeting, visible and invisible figure of the woman-in-series, who recasts absence and silence as forms of presence and witness. This shadowy figure emerges as central to the conceptual space of modernist literature—a terrain not only gendered but radically constructed around the instability of female bodies and their desires.
Ambiguous Cinema: from Simone de Beauvoir to feminist film-phenomenology by Kelli Fuery
ISBN: 9781399504232
Publication Date: 2022-05-31
Simone de Beauvoir's notion of ambiguity became a cornerstone of her philosophy and influenced a radical rethinking of freedom well into the twenty-first century. In Ambiguous Cinema, Fuery examines Beauvoir's notion of ambiguity in relation to film experience, exploring both the legacies and limits of her existentialist ethics through a range of films by independent women filmmakers, including Joanna Hogg, Liliana Cavani, Debra Granik, Cheryl Dunye, Claire Denis, Lucrecia Martel, Lynne Ramsay and Céline Sciamma. In doing so, Fuery deftly demonstrates the currency and relevancy of Beauvoir's ideas to contemporary debates in film-philosophy and feminist thought by examining how these women filmmakers navigate turbulent themes such as moral choice, power, adolescence, love, trauma and motherhood. Reimagining Beauvoir's idea of ambiguity within the context of film studies, Fuery asks that we confront and embrace difficult emotional situations so that we might realise an authentic, if indeterminate, freedom through our cinematic experiences.
Gender and Relatability in Digital Culture: Managing Affect, Intimacy, and Value by Akane Kanai
ISBN: 9783319915142
Publication Date: 2018-08-03
This book explores the practices and the politics of relatable femininity in intimate digital social spaces. Examining a GIF-based digital culture on Tumblr, the author considers how young women produce relatability through humorous, generalisable representations of embarrassment, frustration, and resilience in everyday situations. Relatability is examined as an affective relation that offers the feeling of sameness and female friendship amongst young women. However, this relation is based on young women's ability to competently negotiate the 'feeling rules' that govern youthful femininity. Such classed and racialised feeling rules require young women to perfect the performance of normalcy: they must mix self-deprecation with positivity; they must be relatably flawed but not actual 'failures'. Situated in debates about postfeminism, self-representation and digital identity, this book connects understandings of digital visual culture to gender, race, and class, and neoliberal imperatives to perform the 'right feelings'. Gender and Relatability in Digital Culture will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including gender studies, cultural studies, sociology, and media studies.
Feminist Media Histories Book Series by Shelley Stamp (Series Editor)
The Feminist Media Histories book series publishes feminist histories of film, radio, television, video, playable media and digital culture across a range of periods and global contexts. Inter-medial and trans-national in its approach, the series features historical scholarship on an array of 19th-, 20th- and 21st-century media, examining the historical roles gender and sexuality have played in film, video, audio, and digital technologies, while documenting the engagement of women and LGBTQ communities with these media as audiences and consumers, as creators and executives, as critics, writers and theorists, as technicians and laborers, and as educators, activists and librarians. The series takes as its premise the idea that gender and sexuality have been instrumental, but overlooked, ingredients in both the evolution of modern media and their cultural influence, and that feminist histories of the role gender and sexuality have played in the cultural production and circulation of these media are essential to understanding their social, industrial and aesthetic impact.

The Wrong Kind of Women: Inside Our Revolution to Dismantle the Gods of Hollywood by Naomi McDougall Jones
ISBN: 9780807033456
Publication Date: 2020-02-04
A brutally honest look at the systemic exclusion of women in film—an industry with massive cultural influence—and how, in response, women are making space in cinema for their voices to be heard. Generation after generation, women have faced the devastating reality that Hollywood is a system built to keep them out. The films created by that system influence everything from our worldviews to our brain chemistry. When women's voices are excluded from the medium, the impact on society is immense. Actor, screenwriter, and award-winning independent filmmaker Naomi McDougall Jones takes us inside the cutthroat, scandal-laden film industry, where only 5% of top studio films are directed by women and less than 20% of leading characters in mainstream films are female. Jones calls on all of us to act radically to build a different kind of future for cinema—not only for the women being actively hurt inside the industry but for those outside it, whose lives, purchasing decisions, and sense of selves are shaped by the stories told. Informed by the journey of her own career; by interviews with others throughout the film industry; and by cold, hard data, Jones deconstructs the casual, commonplace sexism rampant in Hollywood that has kept women out of key roles for decades. Next, she shows us the growing women-driven revolution in filmmaking—sparked by streaming services, crumbling distribution models, direct-to-audience access via innovative online platforms, and outside advocacy groups—which has enabled women to build careers outside the traditional studio system. Finally, she makes a business case for financing and producing films by female filmmakers.
Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, feminism, genre by Alison Peirse (Editor)
ISBN: 9781978805118
Publication Date: 2020-09-30
"But women were never out there making horror films, that's why they are not written about—you can't include what doesn't exist." This is what you get when you are a woman working in horror, whether as a writer, academic, festival programmer, or filmmaker. These assumptions are based on decades of flawed scholarly, critical, and industrial thinking about the genre. Women Make Horror sets right these misconceptions. Women have always made horror. They have always been an audience for the genre, and today, as this book reveals, women academics, critics, and filmmakers alike remain committed to a film genre that offers almost unlimited opportunities for exploring and deconstructing social and cultural constructions of gender, femininity, sexuality, and the body. Women Make Horror explores narrative and experimental cinema; short, anthology, and feature filmmaking; and offers case studies of North American, Latin American, European, East Asian, and Australian filmmakers, films, and festivals. With this book we can transform how we think about women filmmakers and genre.
Feminism in Play by Kishonna L. Gray (Editor); Gerald Voorhees (Editor); Emma Vossen (Editor)
ISBN: 9783319905389
Publication Date: 2018-10-10
Feminism in Play focuses on women as they are depicted in video games, as participants in games culture, and as contributors to the games industry. This volume showcases women's resistance to the norms of games culture, as well as women's play and creative practices both in and around the games industry. Contributors analyze the interconnections between games and the broader societal and structural issues impeding the successful inclusion of women in games and games culture. In offering this framework, this volume provides a platform to the silenced and marginalized, offering counter-narratives to the post-racial and post-gendered fantasies that so often obscure the violent context of production and consumption of games culture.
Female Action Heroes: A guide to women in comics, video games, film, and television by Gladys L. Knight
ISBN: 9780313376122
Publication Date: 2010-06-08
This book offers 25 profiles of some of the most popular female action heroes throughout the history of film, television, comic books, and video games. Female action heroes, like other fictional characters, not only reveal a lot about society, but greatly influence individuals in society. It is no surprise that the gradual development and increase in the number of female action heroes coincides with societal changes and social movements, such as feminism. Nor is it a surprise that characteristics of female action heroes echo the progressive toughening of women and young girls in the media. Female Action Heroes: A Guide to Women in Comics, Video Games, Film, and Television brings to the forefront the historical representation of women and girls in film, television, comic books, and video games. The book includes profiles of 25 of the most popular female action heroes, arranged in alphabetical order for easy reference. Each chapter includes sections on the hero's origins, her power suit, weapons, abilities, and the villains with whom she grapples. Most significantly, each profile offers an analysis of the hero's story—and her impact on popular culture.
Everything I Need I Get from You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It by Kaitlyn Tiffany
ISBN: 9780374539184
Publication Date: 2022-06-14
In 2014, on the side of a Los Angeles freeway, a One Direction fan erected a shrine in the spot where, a few hours earlier, Harry Styles had vomited. "It's interesting for sure," Styles said later, adding, "a little niche, maybe." But what seemed niche to Styles was actually a signpost for an unfathomably large, hyper-connected alternate universe: stan culture. In Everything I Need I Get from You, Kaitlyn Tiffany, a staff writer at The Atlantic and a superfan herself, guides us through the online world of fans, stans, and boybands. Along the way we meet girls who damage their lungs from screaming too loud, fans rallying together to manipulate chart numbers using complex digital subversion, and an underworld of inside jokes and shared memories surrounding band members' allergies, internet typos, and hairstyles. In the process, Tiffany makes a convincing, and often moving, argument that fangirls, in their ingenuity and collaboration, created the social internet we know today. "Before most people were using the internet for anything," Tiffany writes, "fans were using it for everything." With humor, empathy, and an insider's eye, Everything I Need I Get from You reclaims internet history for young women, establishing fandom not as the territory of hysterical girls but as an incubator for digital innovation, art, and community. From alarming, fandom-splitting conspiracy theories about secret love and fake children, to the interplays between high and low culture and capitalism, Tiffany's book is a riotous chronicle of the movement that changed the internet forever.
The 2000s Made Me Gay: Essays on Pop Culture by Grace Perry
ISBN: 9781250760142
Publication Date: 2021-06-01
From The Onion and Reductress contributor, this collection of essays is a hilarious nostalgic trip through beloved 2000s media, interweaving cultural criticism and personal narrative to examine how a very straight decade forged a very queer woman. Today's gay youth have dozens of queer peer heroes, both fictional and real, but former gay teenager Grace Perry did not have that luxury. Instead, she had to search for queerness in the (largely straight) teen cultural phenomena the aughts had to offer: in Lindsay Lohan's fall from grace, Gossip Girl, Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl," country-era Taylor Swift, and Seth Cohen jumping on a coffee cart. And, for better or worse, these touch points shaped her adult identity. She came out on the other side like many millennials did: in her words, gay as hell. Throw on your Von Dutch hats and join Grace on a journey back through the pop culture moments of the aughts, before the cataclysmic shift in LGBTQ representation and acceptance—a time not so long ago, which many seem to forget.
All the Women in My Brain: And Other Concerns by Betty Gilpin
ISBN: 9781250795786
Publication Date: 2022-09-06
Oh. Hi. *takes six long gulps of water during which you're like, may I help you?* My name is Betty. I have depression. I have passion. I have tits the size of printers. And also: I have a brain full of women. There's Blanche VonFuckery, Ingrid St. Rash, and a host of others--some cowering in sweatpants, some howling plans for revolution, and one, oh God, and one . . . slowly vomiting up a crow? Worried for her. These women take turns at the wheel. That's why I feel like a million selves. With a raised eyebrow and a soul-scalpel, I'd like to tell you how I got this way. Because maybe you feel this way too. Let's hop from wild dissections of modern womanhood to boarding school musings to the glossy cringe of Hollywood. Let's laugh at my failures and then quietly hope with me for the dream. Whether that dream is love or liberation or enough IMDB credits to taze the demon snapping at my ankles, we won't know until the shit-fanning end. As a dear friend said after reading this book, it's "either a masterpiece, or it's...completely..." and then she glazed over into a haunted stare. Reader? This book is my opus and it is chaos. Welcome to All the Women in My Brain.
Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop by Danyel Smith
ISBN: 9780593132715
Publication Date: 2022-04-19
American pop music is arguably this country's greatest cultural contribution to the world, and its singular voice and virtuosity were created by a shining thread of Black women geniuses stretching back to the country's founding. This is their surprising, heartbreaking, soaring story—from "one of the generation's greatest, most insightful, most nuanced writers in pop culture" (Shea Serrano). A weave of biography, criticism, and memoir, Shine Bright is Danyel Smith's intimate history of Black women's music as the foundational story of American pop. Smith has been writing this history for more than five years. But as a music fan, and then as an essayist, editor (Vibe, Billboard), and podcast host (Black Girl Songbook), she has been living this history since she was a latchkey kid listening to "Midnight Train to Georgia" on the family stereo. Smith's detailed narrative begins with Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved woman who sang her poems, and continues through the stories of Mahalia Jackson, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, and Mariah Carey, as well as the under-considered careers of Marilyn McCoo, Deniece Williams, and Jody Watley. Shine Bright is an overdue paean to musical masters whose true stories and genius have been hidden in plain sight—and the book Danyel Smith was born to write.
Thick: And other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom
ISBN: 9781620974360
Publication Date: 2019-01-08
In eight highly praised treatises on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom—award-winning professor and acclaimed author of Lower Ed—is unapologetically "thick": deemed "thick where I should have been thin, more where I should have been less," McMillan Cottom refuses to shy away from blending the personal with the political, from bringing her full self and voice to the fore of her analytical work. Thick "transforms narrative moments into analyses of whiteness, black misogyny, and status-signaling as means of survival for black women" (Los Angeles Review of Books) with "writing that is as deft as it is amusing" (Darnell L. Moore). This "transgressive, provocative, and brilliant" (Roxane Gay) collection cements McMillan Cottom's position as a public thinker capable of shedding new light on what the "personal essay" can do. She turns her chosen form into a showcase for her critical dexterity, investigating everything from Saturday Night Live, LinkedIn, and BBQ Becky to sexual violence, infant mortality, and Trump rallies.Collected in an indispensable volume that speaks to the everywoman and the erudite alike, these unforgettable essays never fail to be "painfully honest and gloriously affirming" and hold "a mirror to your soul and to that of America" (Dorothy Roberts).
Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
ISBN: 9780062282712
Publication Date: 2014-08-05
A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched cultural observers of her generation. In these funny and insightful essays, Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman (Sweet Valley High) of color (The Help) while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years (Girls, Django in Chains) and commenting on the state of feminism today (abortion, Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture. Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better, coming from one of our most interesting and important cultural critics.
Women on Ice: Feminist Essays on the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan Spectacle by Cynthia Baughman (Editor)
ISBN: 0415911508
Publication Date: 1995-12-07
The attack on Nancy Kerrigan at the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships set the stage for a Winter Olympics spectacle: Tonya versus Nancy. Women on Ice collects the writings of a diverse group of feminists who address and question our national obsession with Tonya and Nancy and what this tells us about perceptions of women in twentieth century America.

A Fantastic Woman (Una Mujer Fantástica) by Sebastián Lelio (director)
Publication Date: 2017-11-27
A woman's life is thrown into turmoil following the death of her partner. Mourning the loss of the man she loved, she finds herself under intense scrutiny from those with no regard for her privacy.
The Forty-Year-Old Version by Radha Blank (director, starring)
Publication Date: 2020-01-25
A down-on-her-luck playwright thinks the only way she can salvage her voice as an artist is to become a rapper at 40.
Shirkers by Sandi Tan (director, editor)
Publication Date: 2018-1-21
In 1992 teenager Sandi Tan shoots Singapore's first road movie with her enigmatic American mentor, Georges, who then absconded with all of the footage. The 16 mm film is recovered 20 years later, sending Tan, who is now a novelist living in Los Angeles, on a personal odyssey in search of Georges' footprints.
Unpregnant by Rachel Lee Goldenberg (director)
Publication Date: 2020-10-10
A pregnant teen and her former best friend embark on a life-changing road trip from Missouri to New Mexico.
The Love Witch by Anna Biller (director)
Publication Date: 2016-01-31
Elaine (Samantha Robinson), a beautiful young witch, is determined to find a man to love her. In her gothic Victorian apartment she makes spells and potions, then picks up men and seduces them. However, her spells work too well, and she ends up with a string of hapless victims. When she at last meets the man of her dreams, her desperation to be loved drives her to the brink of murder.
Tangerine by Sean Baker (director)
Publication Date: 2015
After hearing that her boyfriend/pimp cheated on her while she was in jail, a transgender sex worker and her best friend set out to find him and teach him and his new lover a lesson.
This Changes Everything by Tom Donahue (director)
Publication Date: 2018-09-07
Told first-hand by some of Hollywood's leading voices behind and in front of the camera, This Changes Everything uncovers what is beneath one of the most confounding dilemmas in the entertainment industry—the under-representation and misrepresentation of women. It takes an incisive look at the history, empirical evidence, and systemic forces that foster gender discrimination and thus reinforce disparity in our culture. Most importantly, the film seeks pathways and solutions from within and outside the industry, and around the world.

Television featuring shows written by and starring women.

A League of Their Own by Will Graham, Abbi Jacobson (Creators)
Publication Date: 2022-
A League of Their Own is an American period sports comedy drama television series co-created by Will Graham and Abbi Jacobson, who also stars. It is an adaptation of the 1992 film of the same name with new characters and storylines, about the formation of a World War II-era women's professional baseball team.nThe series, set in 1943, is about the formation of the Rockford Peaches, a women's team in the nascent All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. While her husband is away at war, Carson Shaw leaves her small town life to pursue her dream of playing professional baseball. Maxine Chapman is an African-American woman obsessed with baseball, who cannot even get people to allow her to try out and struggles to get considered for any baseball team.
I May Destroy You by Michaela Coel (Creator, Writer, Director, Starring)
Publication Date: 2020
I May Destroy You is at once brave and delicate, untangling the trauma of sexual assault with dark humor and moments of deep discomfort all held together on the strength of Michaela Coel's undeniable talent.
Work in Progress by Abby McEnany; Tim Mason (Creators)
Publication Date: 2019-
Abby is a 45-year-old self-identified fat, queer dyke whose misfortune and despair unexpectedly lead her to a vibrantly transformative relationship. Chicago improv mainstay Abby McEnany co-created and stars in this uniquely human comedy series.
Feel Good by Mae Martin (Creator, Writer, Starring)
Publication Date: 2020-2021
A semi-autobiographical comedy series from comedian Mae Martin, Feel Good is a deeply personal and poignant story about the unique pressures of navigating the modern-day landscape of gender and sexuality. It follows recovering addict and comedian Mae, who attempts to control the addictive behaviors and intense romanticism that permeate every facet of her life. Things become even more complicated for her, as she gets into an all-consuming relationship with her new girlfriend, George, played by Charlotte Ritchie.
We Are Lady Parts by Nida Manzoor (Creator)
Publication Date: 2021-
Geeky biochemical engineering Ph.D. student Amina Hussein becomes the unlikely lead guitarist of Lady Parts, an all-female Muslim punk band on a mission to get a proper gig. Saira, the band's fierce and enigmatic frontwoman, sees something in Amina the others can't. Saira leverages Amina's desperation to find a husband and offers to set her up with potential matches if she agrees to join. Torn between her straitlaced university friends and members of Lady Parts, Amina tries to find her voice.
Shrill by Aidy Bryant, Lindy West, Alexandra Rushfield (Creators)
Publication Date: 2019-2021
A struggling young journalist (played by Aidy Bryant) is determined to change her life without changing her body. While dealing with an unreliable boyfriends, sick parents and a perfectionist boss, she begins to understand that she's just as good as everyone else.
Betty by Crystal Moselle (creator)
Publication Date: 2020-2021
Betty is an American teen comedy television series created by Crystal Moselle. The series is based on Moselle's 2018 feature film Skate Kitchen, which was in turn based on her 2016 short film That One Day. It includes most of the cast of the original feature film, and focuses on the Gen Z all-girl group's efforts to stand out in New York's predominantly male world of skateboarding. Betty follows "a tight-knit group of girl skaters and follows their everyday lives as they navigate the male-dominated world of skateboarding. The title comes from the derogatory nickname sometimes thrown at them by men."

Check out the watch lists below. For help accessing a film through IU Libraries see our guide "Finding Online Streaming Videos" or check Kanopy.

TimeOut: The 100 best feminist films of all time by Joshua Rothkopf and Abbey Bender
Cosmopolitan: The Feminist Movies Everyone Needs to Stream Right Now, by Leah Thomas AND Leah Marilla Thomas
Refinery29: 24 Essential TV Shows For Every Pop Culture-Loving Feminist by Rachel Paige
BFI: 10 great films about queens and empresses by Georgina Guthrie

Below you will find resources for exploring feminist media studies through film reviews, substacks, and non-peer-reviewed channels.

Another Gaze—Reviews

Another Gaze publishes reviews on a wide variety of films from scholars, staff writers, freelances, and film critics. Follow them on Twitter, Instagram, and/or Facebook to keep up with publications. Another Gaze also runs Another Screen, an "irregular streaming platform, bringing you week-long programmes of films by women across modes of production and geographies, with new writing and translations about these works."

T.V. Dinner (Substack) by Maddy Court

Maddy Court writes about television and queer relationships. You might know her as the author of the book and zine series titled "The Ex-Girlfriend of My Ex-Girlfriend Is My Girlfriend." Check out her recaps and commentary of The L Word: Gen Q, Tampa Baes, A League of Their Own, And Just Like That, and more!

Featured | The Sounds of Women's History Month

In recognition of Women's* History Month in March, we have curated a series of playlists honoring the unforgettable contributions of women and femme-of-center nonbinary folks across the history of music, in genres such as folk, punk rock, heavy metal, and classical.

This first playlist is a retrospective of folk artists, beginning in the 60s and spanning all the way to 2021. This includes chart-topping and influential musicians such as Joan Baez and Nico and lesser-known artists such as Linda Perhacs and Elizabeth Cotton from the 20th century, as well as the next generation of folk and indie artists in the 21st century, such as Neko Case and Angel Olsen. To learn more about this music and the artists who have made folk an enduring musical tradition, check out some of the resources we used to inspire this playlist.

Resources for Further Exploration

"Tomorrow is My Turn: A Look at Women of Color in Folk Music, Past and Present"(Medium: Festival Peak)
"How Joni Mitchell Made Ladies of the Canyon and Galvanized the Singer Songwriter Movement" (Louder Magazine)
"Buffy Sainte-Marie: 75 Things to know about the Canadian Icon" (CBC Magazine)
"Elizabeth Cotten: Master of American folk music" (Smithsonian Folkways)
"Mitski is the 21st Century's Poet Laureate of Young Adulthood" (NPR)
"Weyes Blood on Stunning New LP, the Titanic Sinking, and Climate Change" (Rolling Stone Magazine)
"Courtney Barnett Talks About Taking on Misogyny and Self-Doubt with Her New Album" (Pitchfork)

*Note: Trans women are women. For the purposes of this feature, we have chosen to center feminine expression and embodiment, and so include contributions from artists and scholars who identify as women, whether cisgender or transgender, as well as nonbinary and genderqueer individuals who are femme, femme-of-center, or who identify with or perform femininity in some way. For more on these concepts, check out this article from the ACLU ("Trans Women are Women") or explore some of the resources from this feature on "The Metaphysics of Gender" from the Philosophy Research Guide. And, if you would like to explore the music of trans women in particular, check out our feature on "Transfeminine Worlds," from the Gender Studies Research Guide, which includes a playlist of songs by transfeminine musicians.

Beyond the Playlist
As with many of these national commemorations, one month is never enough to fully honor and celebrate the history and culture of marginalized communities, let alone heal the legacies (and ongoing reality) of harm and systemic oppression they've experienced. We recognize that resisting and rejecting misogyny and cisheteropatriarchy cannot be manifested simply through resource lists and guides, however important and well-intentioned, and that justice and liberation for women, expansively defined, and all who challenge and live outside of binary gender is the work of generations. We are, nevertheless, committed to doing what we can to work towards a different, more equitable and caring future.

If you'd like to engage more deeply with Women's History Month, units across the Libraries have created a number of interrelated resources and features to provide more holistic coverage of this commemoration. You'll find those, below:

Feminist Media Studies (Media Studies)
Transfeminine Worlds: Works by Trans Women (Gender Studies)
Spotlight on Sex Work (Gender Studies)
Feminism & Feminist Philosophies (Philosophy)
In Memoriam: bell hooks (Philosophy)
Spotlight on Victorian Women Writers Project (English & American Literature)
Women of Ukraine (Area Studies)
Women's History Month Streaming and DVD Resources (Media Services)
Primary Sources on Women in University Collections (Archives & Special Collections)
Youth Materials on Women's History and Women’s Lives (Education Library)

Retrospective of punk acts, from its inception through recent times. Explore the sounds of femme artists in punk and the ways they evolved the genre. To learn more about the history of women and transgender punk rockers, check out the resources we used to curate this playlist below:

"Atypical Girls: The Female Punks Who Fought For Equality" (udiscovermusic)
"An Essential Primer on Punk’s Feminist History" (The Nation)
"For Laura Jane Grace, Punk was a Form of Armor" (NPR)
"ESG's Otherworldly Sound" (The New Yorker)
"The Story of Feminist Punk in 33 Songs" (Pitchfork)
"20 Black Punk Bands You Need to Listen To" (okay africa)
"Queer as Punk: A Guide to LGBTQIA+ Punk" (NPR)
"From Poly Styrene to Big Joanie: A celebration of black women in punk" (The Mancunion)
"Killing Gender Roles: Punk Trans Women on Your Radar" (upublished zine)
"Danger, Anger, and Noise: The Women Punks of the Late 1970s and Their Music" (Oxford Handbooks Online)
"The Forgotten Revolution of Female Punk Musicians in the 1970s" (Peace Review)

Retrospective of women and femme-of-center genderqueer rockers across the many subgenres that comprise rock & roll music and heavy metal, from the 80s to today. Explore how femme artists have shaped the sound of heavy music across its history. To learn more about the history of the women and transgender artists who have blown us away with their sound, check out the resources we used to curate this playlist below:

"The Never-Ending Debate Over Women in Metal and Hard Rock" (The Atlantic)
"The Progression of Women in Rock" (Five Cent Sound)
"Women in Traditional Metal: The Old School, the New School, and the Girlschool" (Ride Into Glory)
"Pioneering Women in Hard Rock and Heavy Metal Music" (udiscovermusic)
"27 Women Who Pioneered Hard Rock & Heavy Metal" (Loudwire)
"Ten Divine, Diabolical Feminine Artists Challenging Heavy Metal Machismo" (Bandcamp Daily)
"Black Women Who Shaped Rock & Roll" (Rolling Stone)
"White Washed: Black Women in Rock" (Bitch)
"Out of the Closet and Into the Pit: The Queer Artists Revoluionising Extreme Metal" (Metal Hammer)

Retrospective of women and femmes in rap, from the 80s to today. Explore how femme artists have shaped the sound of hip hop across its evolution. To learn more about the history of women and transgender MCs, explore some of the resources we used to curate this playlist below:

"All Hail the Queens: A Look Back at the Legacy of Women in Hip-Hop" (ABC)
"Let's Talk About the Female Rappers Who Shaped Hip-Hop" (udiscovermusic)
"The Evolution of Women in Hip-Hop" (The Pine Needle)
"The Shifting World of Women in Hip Hop" (Ampersand)
"Ladies First: 31 Female Rappers Who Changed Hip-Hop" (Billboard)
"Supa Dupa Fly: The History Of Women In Hip-Hop" (podcast, NPR)
"Women in Hip-Hop in the Year 2020" (Medium)
"2020 Was the Year Female Rappers Dominated" (NPR)
"Inside the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" (Rolling Stone Magazine)
"Princess Nokia: 'At My Shows, Girls Can Take Up Space the Way Men Do'" (The Guardian)
"Rapper Kodie Shane: Confident, Young, Black, Queer, and About to Take Over" (Billboard Magazine)
"Transgender Rapper Quay Dash: 'I'm here to stay and I'm here to slay'" (Guardian)
The Feminine Musique: Cardi, Megan, and Black Feminism (Afterglow)

Curated selection of contributions from women in classical music and jazz, from the beginning of the 20th century to today. To learn more about the contributions of women and transgender composers and instrumentalists who have contributed to these genres, enjoy some of the resources we used to put together this playlist below:

Further Reading/Listening

"A History of Classical Music (The Women-Only Version)" (The New York Times)
"Women Are Great Composers Too, Why Aren't They Being Heard?" (NPR)
"The Women Who Changed Music" (BBC)
"The Sound of Silence: Classical Music's Forgotten Women" (The Guardian)
"Women Composers by Time Period" (Oxford Music Online)
"Does Classical Music Have a Transgender Problem?" (NPR)
"A Trans Composers Playlist" (VAN)
"Trail-Blazing Trans Women of Color in Classical Music" (AllClassical)
"Suggestions for Transgender Inclusion in Classical Music: A Mini-Cycle" (dissertation)
"A DIY Guide To The History Of Women In Jazz" (NPR)
"Equal at Last? Women in Jazz, By the Numbers" (NPR)
"The Women Who Changed Jazz" (Jazzwise)
"12 Women Influencing the Future of Jazz" (Paste)
"An Exploration of Transgender Identity and Jazz: The Liberation of Jennifer Leitham" (thesis project report)
"Musician Gives Insight Into Being Transgender in Jazz" (video, Now This)

Too often in grand narratives (and playlists), many voices are left out. In this playlist, we've centered the voices of women of color across time and genre as they endeavor to speak out against and articulate the injustices and shortcomings of American democracy across history. In this music is both a ferocious condemnation of the various, interlocking systems of oppression that circumscribe the lives of so many and hope for a future defined by equality and justice. Explore how women of color have crafted political anthems that challenge American democracy to be accountable and inclusive.

Further Reading/Listening

“Black women are creating urgent music for this moment. Here are the songs to listen to — and why they matter” (The Lily)
“15 Top Civil Rights Songs That Promote Freedom and Justice for Black History Month” (Black Enterprise)
“This is How I Feel: A Playlist by Young Black Listeners” (NPR)
"The Songs of Black (women) Folk: Music, Politics, and Everyday Living" (LSU Digital Commons)
"A History of Black Women Using Music to Fight Racial Injustice" (The Women's Network)
"How Women Shaped the Civil Rights Movement through Music" (Futurity)

Books

Women and Music: a history by Karin Anna Pendle (Editor)
ISBN: 025321422X
Publication Date: 2001-04-22
This updated, expanded, and reorganized edition of Women and Music features even more women composers, performers, and patrons, even more musical contexts, and an expanded view of women in music outside Europe and North America. A popular university textbook, Women and Music is enlightening for scholars, a good source of programming ideas for performers, and a pleasure for other music lovers.
A Seat at the Table: Interviews with Women on the Frontline of Music by Amy Raphael
ISBN: 9780349009827
Writer and critic Amy Raphael has interviewed some of the world's most iconic musicians, including Courtney Love, Patti Smith, Björk, Kurt Cobain and Elton John. In 1995 she wrote the critically-acclaimed Never Mind the Bollocks: Women Rewrite Rock, which included a foreword by Debbie Harry. More than two decades on, the music business has changed, but the way women are regarded has not. In this new book, A Seat at the Table, Raphael interviews eighteen women who work in the music industry about learning to speak out, #MeToo, social media, queer politics and the subtleness of everyday misogyny.
Women in Music History: A Research Guide by Jeannie G. Pool
Written by Jeannie Gayle Pool and published in 1977, this little booklet has become a classic in the women-in-music literature. It inspired a generation of scholars to pursue the topic. Only 1,000 were printed. Includes bibliography, discography and an essay; also an alphabetical listing of women composers.
Liner Notes for the Revolution: the intellectual life of black feminist sound by Daphne A. Brooks
ISBN: 9780674052819
Publication Date: 2021-02-23
An award-winning Black feminist music critic takes us on an epic journey through radical sound from Bessie Smith to Beyoncé. Daphne A. Brooks explores more than a century of music archives to examine the critics, collectors, and listeners who have determined perceptions of Black women on stage and in the recording studio. How is it possible, she asks, that iconic artists such as Aretha Franklin and Beyoncé exist simultaneously at the center and on the fringe of the culture industry? Liner Notes for the Revolution offers a startling new perspective on these acclaimed figures--a perspective informed by the overlooked contributions of other Black women concerned with the work of their musical peers. Zora Neale Hurston appears as a sound archivist and a performer, Lorraine Hansberry as a queer Black feminist critic of modern culture, and Pauline Hopkins as America's first Black female cultural commentator. Brooks tackles the complicated racial politics of blues music recording, song collecting, and rock and roll criticism. She makes lyrical forays into the blues pioneers Bessie Smith and Mamie Smith, as well as fans who became critics, like the record-label entrepreneur and writer Rosetta Reitz. In the twenty-first century, pop superstar Janelle Monae's liner notes are recognized for their innovations, while celebrated singers Cécile McLorin Salvant, Rhiannon Giddens, and Valerie June take their place as cultural historians. With an innovative perspective on the story of Black women in popular music--and who should rightly tell it--Liner Notes for the Revolution pioneers a long overdue recognition and celebration of Black women musicians as radical intellectuals.
Black Women and Music: More Than the Blues by Eileen M. Hayes (Editor); Linda F. Williams (Editor); Ingrid Monson (Foreword by)
ISBN: 9780252031847
Publication Date: 2007-03-16
This collection is the first interdisciplinary volume to examine black women's negotiation of race and gender in African American music. Contributors address black women's activity in musical arenas that pre- and postdate the emergence of the vaudeville blues singers of the 1920s. Throughout, the authors illustrate black women's advocacy of themselves as blacks and as women in music. Feminist? Black feminist? The editors take care to stress that each term warrants interrogation: "Black women can and have forged, often, but not always--and not everywhere the same across time--identities that are supple enough to accommodate a sense of female empowerment through 'musicking' in tandem with their sensitivities to black racial allegiances." Individual essays concern the experiences of black women in classical music and in contemporary blues, the history of black female gospel-inflected voices in the Broadway musical, and "hip-hop feminism" and its complications. Focusing on under-examined contexts, authors introduce readers to the work of a prominent gospel announcer, women's music festivals (predominantly lesbian), and to women's involvement in an early avant-garde black music collective. In contradistinction to a compilation of biographies, this volume critically illuminates themes of black authenticity, sexual politics, access, racial uplift through music, and the challenges of writing (black) feminist biography. Black Women and Music is a strong reminder that black women have been and are both social actors and artists contributing to African American thought.
Songs in Black and Lavender: race, sexual politics, and women's music by Eileen M. Hayes; Linda Tillery (Foreword by)
ISBN: 9780252076985
Publication Date: 2010-02-26
Drawing on fieldwork conducted at eight women's music festivals, Eileen M. Hayes shows how studying these festivals--attended by predominately white lesbians--provides critical insight into the role of music and lesbian community formation. She argues that the women's music festival is a significant institutional site for the emergence of black feminist consciousness in the contemporary period. Hayes also offers sage perspectives on black women's involvement in the women's music festival scene, the ramifications of their performances as drag kings in those environments, and the challenges and joys of a black lesbian retreat based on the feminist festival model. With acuity and candor, longtime feminist activist Hayes elucidates why this music scene matters. Veteran vocalist, percussionist, producer, and cultural historian Linda Tillery provides a foreword.
She Bop: the definitive history of women in popular music by Lucy O'Brien
ISBN: 9781908279279
Publication Date: 2012-12-01
She Bop is the definitive in-depth study of women in popular music. Drawing on more than 250 firsthand interviews, it covers nine decades of musical history, from ragtime and vaudeville to punk and hip-hop, and features a remarkable cast of trailblazing female performers: Ella Fitzgerald and Madonna, Billie Holiday and Whitney Houston, Dusty Springfield and Beyonce, and many, many more. First published in 1995, She Bop was widely praised as "a contemporary classic" and "a must for any serious muso's bookshelf". It became a key text on numerous university and college courses, and has had a major impact on writing about women in music. To coincide with the second edition, published in 2002, the National Portrait Gallery in London ran a She Bop exhibition of photographs inspired by the book, while BBC Radio 2 broadcast a two-part documentary series of the same name, which was scripted by O'Brien. In recent years there has been an explosion of female artists on the pop scene. Artists like Adele, Amy Winehouse, and Florence Welch have spearheaded a third British Invasion of the US charts, while American acts such as Lady Gaga, Rihanna, and Katy Perry continue to dominate the global market. This revised and expanded third edition brings the story of She Bop into the 21st century, with extensive revisions throughout and a new final chapter covering the current generation of female performers and the ways in which the internet and digital culture have reconfigured the music industry for women.
The Lost Women of Rock Music: Female Musicians of the Punk Era by Helen Reddington
ISBN: 9781845539573
Publication Date: 2012-04-30
In the late 1970s and early 1980s a new phenomenon emerged in UK popular music - female guitarists, bass-players, keyboard-players and drummers began playing in bands. Before this time, women's presence in rock bands, with a few notable exceptions, had always been as vocalists. This sudden influx of female musicians into the male domain of rock music was brought about by the enabling ethic of punk rock ('anybody can do it!') and by the impact of the Sex Discrimination Act. With the demise of the punk scene, interest in these musicians evaporated and other priorities became important to music audiences. This book investigates the social and commercial reasons why these women became lost from the rock music record, and rewrites this period of popular music history. In addition to a wealth of original interview material with key protagonists, including the late John Peel, Geoff Travis, The Raincoats and Poison Girls, this new edition has been updated to include interviews with members of Birmingham-based band The Au Pairs, Leeds-based band Delta 5 and Viv Albertine of The Slits. Lucy Whitman (aka Lucy Toothpaste), who started the fanzine Jolt and later wrote for Spare Rib, also provides enlightening words on the relationship between female punk band members and feminism. The author also draws on her own experience as bass-player in a punk band.
Queer-Feminist Punk: an anti-social history by Maria Katharina Wiedlack
ISBN: 9783902902276
This history makes use of anti-social theory to take a broad and multifaceted look at queer-feminist punk—from its origins in the 1980s to its contemporary influences on the Occupy movement and Pussy Riot activism.
Revenge of the She-Punks by Vivien Goldman
ISBN: 9781477316542
Publication Date: 2019-05-07
As an industry insider and pioneering post-punk musician, Vivien Goldman's perspective on music journalism is unusually well-rounded. In Revenge of the She-Punks, she probes four themes--identity, money, love, and protest--to explore what makes punk such a liberating art form for women. With her visceral style, Goldman blends interviews, history, and her personal experience as one of Britain's first female music writers in a book that reads like a vivid documentary of a genre defined by dismantling boundaries. A discussion of the Patti Smith song "Free Money," for example, opens with Goldman on a shopping spree with Smith. Tamar-Kali, whose name pays homage to a Hindu goddess, describes the influence of her Gullah ancestors on her music, while the late Poly Styrene's daughter reflects on why her Somali-Scots-Irish mother wrote the 1978 punk anthem "Identity," with the refrain "Identity is the crisis you can't see." Other strands feature artists from farther afield (including in Colombia and Indonesia) and genre-busting revolutionaries such as Grace Jones, who wasn't exclusively punk but clearly influenced the movement while absorbing its liberating audacity. From punk's Euro origins to its international reach, this is an exhilarating world tour.
Trouble Girls: The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock by Barbara O'Dair
ISBN: 0679768742
Publication Date: 1997-09-08
Essays by leading music critics look at the most important female rock musicians, singers, and groups, with profiles of Bonnie Raitt, Carol King, Tina Turner, Janis Joplin, Madonna, and many others.
God Save the Queens by Kathy Iandoli
ISBN: 9780062878502
Publication Date: 2019-10-22
"Without God Save the Queens, it is possible that the contributions of dozens of important female hip-hop artists who have sold tens of millions of albums, starred in monumental films, and influenced the direction of the culture would continue to go unrecognized." --AllHipHop.com Can't Stop Won't Stop meets Girls to the Front in this essential and long overdue history of hip-hop's female pioneers and its enduring stars. Every history of hip-hop previously published, from Jeff Chang's Can't Stop Won't Stop to Shea Serrano's The Rap Yearbook, focuses primarily on men, glaringly omitting a thorough and respectful examination of the presence and contribution of the genre's female artists. For far too long, women in hip-hop have been relegated to the shadows, viewed as the designated "First Lady" thrown a contract, a pawn in some beef, or even worse. But as Kathy Iandoli makes clear, the reality is very different. Today, hip-hop is dominated by successful women such as Cardi B and Nicki Minaj, yet there are scores of female artists whose influence continues to resonate. God Save the Queens pays tribute to the women of hip-hop--from the early work of Roxanne Shante, to hitmakers like Queen Latifah and Missy Elliot, to the superstars of today. Exploring issues of gender, money, sexuality, violence, body image, feuds, objectification and more, God Save the Queens is an important and monumental work of music journalism that at last gives these influential female artists the respect they have long deserved.
Women of the Underground: Music by Zora von Burden
ISBN: 9781933149196
Publication Date: 2010-08-24
In a series of 30 candid interviews with radical women musicians, editor Zora von Burden gives the forerunners of this generation a voice and probes the depths of how and why they broke through society's limitations to create works of outstanding measure. Includes interviews with: Wanda Jackson, Moe Tucker (Velvet Underground), Teresa Nervosa (Butthole Surfers), Nina Hagen, Lydia Lunch, Patricia Morrison (Sisters of Mercy, The Damned), Pamela Tent (The Cockettes) and many others. An inspiration to young women and fascinating to music fans of all ages and genders.
Honoring Trans and Gender-Expansive Students in Music Education by Matthew L. Garrett; Joshua Palkki
ISBN: 9780197506608
Publication Date: 2021-08-02
Trans and gender-expansive youth deserve a safe and empowering space to engage in high quality school music experiences. Supportive music teachers ensure that all students have access to ethically and pedagogically sound music education. In this practical resource, authors Matthew L. Garrett(he/him) and Joshua Palkki (he/him) encourage music educators to honor gender diversity through ethically and pedagogically sound practices. Honoring Trans and Gender-Expansive Students in Music Education is intended for music teachers and music teacher educators across choral, instrumental, andgeneral music classroom environments. Grounded in theory and nascent research, we provide historical and social context, and practical direction for working with students who inhabit a variety of spaces among a gender identity and expression continuum. Trans and gender expansive students often placetheir trust in music teachers, with whom they have developed a deep bond over time. It is essential, then, for music teachers to understand how issues of gender play out in formal and informal school music environments. Stories of trans and gender expansive youth and their music teachers anchorpractical suggestions for honoring students in school music classrooms and more general school contexts.
The Emergence of Trans by Ruth Pearce; Igi Moon; Kat Gupta
ISBN: 9781138504097
Publication Date: 2019-09-01
This book represents the vanguard of new work in the rapidly growing arena of Trans Studies. Thematically organised, it brings together studies from an international, cross-disciplinary range of contributors to address a range of questions pertinent to the emergence of trans lives and discourses. Examining the ways in which the emergence of trans challenges, develops and extends understandings of gender and reconfigures everyday lives, it asks how trans lives and discourses articulate and contest with issues of rights, education and popular common-sense. With attention to the question of how trans has shaped and been shaped by new modes of social action and networking, The Emergence of Trans also explores what the proliferation of trans representation across multiple media forms and public discourse suggests about the wider cultural moment, and considers the challenges presented for health care, social policy, gender and sexuality theory, and everyday articulations of identity. As such, it will appeal to scholars and students of gender and sexuality studies, as well as activists, professionals and individuals interested in trans lives and discourses.
Encyclopedia of Gender in Media by Mary E. Kosut (Editor)
ISBN: 9781412990790
Publication Date: 2012-05-18
The media strongly influences our everyday notions of gender roles and our concepts of gender identity. The Encyclopedia of Gender in Media critically examines the role of the media in enabling, facilitating, or challenging the social construction of gender in our society. The work addresses a variety of entertainment and news content in print and electronic media and explores the social construction of masculinity as well as femininity. In addition to representations of gender within the media, we also analyze gender issues related to media ownership and the media workforce. Despite an abundance of textbooks, anthologies, and university press monographs on the topic of gender in media, until now no comprehensive reference work has tackled this topic of perennial interest in student research and papers.Features and benefits: 150 signed entries (each with Cross References and Further Readings) are organized in A-to-Z fashion to give students easy access to the full range of topics within gender in media. A thematic Reader's Guide in the front matter groups related entries by broad topical or thematic areas to make it easy for users to find related entries at a glance, with themes including "Discrimination & Media Effects," "Media Modes," "New Media," "Media Portrayals & Representations," "Biographies," and more. In the electronic version, the Reader's Guide combines with a detailed Index and the Cross References to provide users with robust search-and browse capacities. A Chronology in the back matter helps students put individual events into broader historical context. A Glossary provides students with concise definitions to key terms in the field. A Resource Guide to classic books, journals, and web sites (along with the Further Readings accompanying each entry) helps guide students to further resources for their research journeys. An Appendix provides users with a number of reports related to gender in media.
Wendy Carlos by Amanda Sewell
ISBN: 9780190053468
Publication Date: 2020-09-02
With her debut album Switched-On Bach, composer and electronic musician Wendy Carlos (b. 1939) brought the sound of the Moog synthesizer to a generation of listeners, helping to effect arguably one of the most substantial changes in popular music's sound since musicians began using amplifiers. Her story is not only one of a person who blazed new trails in electronic music for decades but is also the story of a person who intersected in many ways with American popular culture, medicine, and social trends during the second half of the 20th century and well into the 21st. There is much to tell about her life and about the ways in which her life reflects many dimensions of American culture. Carlos's identity as a transgender woman has shaped many aspects of her life, her career, how she relates to the public, and how the public has received her and her music. Cultural factors surrounding the treatment of transgender people affected many of the decisions that Carlos has made over the decades. Additionally, cultural reception and perception of transgender people has colored how journalists, scholars, and fans have written about Carlos and her music for decades.
Women Drummers by Angela Smith
ISBN: 9780810888340
Publication Date: 2014-04-10
In 1942, drummer Viola Smith sent shock waves through the jazz world by claiming in Down Beat magazine that "hep girls" could sit in on any jam session and hold their own. In Women Drummers: A History from Rock and Jazz to Blues and Country, Angela Smith takes Viola at her word, offering a comprehensive look at the world of professional drumming and the women who had the courage and chops to break the barriers of this all-too-male field. Combining archival research with personal interviews of more than fifty female drummers representing more than eight decades in music history, Smith paints a vivid picture of their struggles to overcome discrimination--not only as professional musicians but in other parts of their lives. Women Drummers outlines the evolution of female drumming from pre-biblical times when women held important leadership roles to their silencing by the church during the Middle Ages to spearheading the fight for women's rights in the modern era. The stories and personal accounts of female drummers who bucked tradition and societal norms are told against the backdrop of the times in which they performed and the genres they represented, from rock and jazz to blues and country. Although women have proven time and time again that they can more than hold their own against their male counterparts, female drummers not only remain a minority, but their contributions have been obscured by the traditional chauvinistic attitudes in the music business and gender stereotypes that surround the drum itself as a "male" instrument. Women Drummers takes a major step forward in undoing this misconception by acknowledging the talent, contribution, and growing power of women drummers in today's music environment.
Girls to the Front by Sara Marcus
ISBN: 9780061806360
Publication Date: 2010-09-28
Girls to the Front is the epic, definitive history of Riot Grrrl--the radical feminist uprising that exploded into the public eye in the 1990s and included incendiary punk bands Bikini Kill, Bratmobile,Heavens to Betsy, and Huggy Bear. A dynamic chronicle not just a movement but an era, this is the story of a group of pissed-off girls with no patience for sexism and no intention of keeping quiet.
Popular Music and the Politics of Hope by Susan Fast (Editor); Craig Jennex (Editor)
ISBN: 9781138055865
Publication Date: 2019-04-17
In today's culture, popular music is a vital site where ideas about gender and sexuality are imagined and disseminated. Popular Music and the Politics of Hope: Queer and Feminist Interventions explores what that means with a wide-ranging collection of chapters that consider the many ways in which contemporary pop music performances of gender and sexuality are politically engaged and even radical. With analyses rooted in feminist and queer thought, contributors explore music from different genres and locations, including Beyoncé's Lemonade, A Tribe Called Red's We Are the Halluci Nation, and celebrations of Vera Lynn's 100th Birthday. At a bleak moment in global politics, this collection focuses on the concept of critical hope: the chapters consider making and consuming popular music as activities that encourage individuals to imagine and work toward a better, more just world. Addressing race, class, aging, disability, and colonialism along with gender and sexuality, the authors articulate the diverse ways popular music can contribute to the collective political projects of queerness and feminism. With voices from senior and emerging scholars, this volume offers a snapshot of today's queer and feminist scholarship on popular music that is an essential read for students and scholars of music and cultural studies.
Pink Noises by Tara Rodgers
ISBN: 9780822346616
Publication Date: 2010-03-23
Pink Noises brings together twenty-four interviews with women in electronic music and sound cultures, including club and radio DJs, remixers, composers, improvisers, instrument builders, and installation and performance artists. The collection is an extension of Pinknoises.com, the critically-acclaimed website founded by musician and scholar Tara Rodgers in 2000 to promote women in electronic music and make information about music production more accessible to women and girls. That site featured interviews that Rodgers conducted with women artists, exploring their personal histories, their creative methods, and the roles of gender in their work. This book offers new and lengthier interviews, a critical introduction, and resources for further research and technological engagement. Contemporary electronic music practices are illuminated through the stories of women artists of different generations and cultural backgrounds. They include the creators of ambient soundscapes, "performance novels," sound sculptures, and custom software, as well as the developer of the Deep Listening philosophy and the founders of the Liquid Sound Lounge radio show and the monthly Basement Bhangra parties in New York. These and many other artists open up about topics such as their conflicted relationships to formal music training and mainstream media representations of women in electronic music. They discuss using sound to work creatively with structures of time and space, and voice and language; challenge distinctions of nature and culture; question norms of technological practice; and balance their needs for productive solitude with collaboration and community. Whether designing and building modular synthesizers with analog circuits or performing with a wearable apparatus that translates muscle movements into electronic sound, these artists expand notions of who and what counts in matters of invention, production, and noisemaking. Pink Noises is a powerful testimony to the presence and vitality of women in electronic music cultures, and to the relevance of sound to feminist concerns.
Shine Bright by Danyel Smith
ISBN: 9780593132715
Publication Date: 2022-04-19
American pop music is arguably this country's greatest cultural contribution to the world, and its singular voice and virtuosity were created by a shining thread of Black women geniuses stretching back to the country's founding. This is their surprising, heartbreaking, soaring story--"one of the generation's greatest, most insightful, most nuanced writers in pop culture" (Shea Serrano) "Sparkling . . . the overdue singing of a Black girl's song, with perfect pitch . . . delicious to read."--Oprah Daily ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, The Root, Variety, Esquire, The Guardian, Newsweek, Pitchfork, She Reads, Publishers Weekly SHORTLISTED FOR THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD A weave of biography, criticism, and memoir, Shine Bright is Danyel Smith's intimate history of Black women's music as the foundational story of American pop. Smith has been writing this history for more than five years. But as a music fan, and then as an essayist, editor (Vibe, Billboard), and podcast host (Black Girl Songbook), she has been living this history since she was a latchkey kid listening to "Midnight Train to Georgia" on the family stereo. Smith's detailed narrative begins with Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved woman who sang her poems, and continues through the stories of Mahalia Jackson, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, and Mariah Carey, as well as the under-considered careers of Marilyn McCoo, Deniece Williams, and Jody Watley. Shine Bright is an overdue paean to musical masters whose true stories and genius have been hidden in plain sight--and the book Danyel Smith was born to write.

Periodicals

Hot Wire: The Journal of Women’s Music and Culture
Hot Wire: The Journal of Women’s Music and Culture was first published in 1984. Hot Wire covered all aspects of lesbian feminist women’s entertainment and especially highlighted these spaces in Chicago. The journal grew out of an organization called Not Just a Stage which was formed by Toni Armstrong, Jr. who had been publishing an annual directory of women’s music resources since 1977.
Paid My Dues: A Quarterly Journal of Women and Music
Paid My Dues: Journal of Women & Music was an American feminist periodical published from 1974 until 1980. Published quarterly, it provided a literary space for women to write and share their experiences and ideas about music.
Women & Music: a journal of gender and culture
Women and Music is an annual journal of scholarship about women, music, and culture. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines and approaches, this refereed journal seeks to further the understanding of the relationships among gender, music, and culture, with special attention being given to the concerns of women.
Women of Note Quarterly: Historical and Contemporary Women Composers
The Magazine of Historical and Contemporary Women Composers presents an interesting combination of profiles of living composers; reviews of books, recordings, and printed music; and articles about historical figures. Quotes by women are interspersed throughout the text, which celebrates all aspects of women in music. All reviews and articles are signed and contributors' biographies appear at the end of the issue. The writers have academic and music-industry backgrounds, but the prose tends towards the informal and makes for easy reading.
Rockrgrl
Rockrgrl was the first national publication for female musicians in the United States. Created by writer Carla DeSantis in 1994, the magazine purely focused on women in music and highlighted the artistic diversity of women musicians, often overlooked in mainstream culture. The magazine ran for eleven years.
Venus Zine
Venus Zine was a quarterly internationally circulated magazine covering women in music, film, art, entertainment, literature, fashion, indie culture and DIY culture. It was published from 1995 through 2010.
International Alliance for Women in Music Journal
The Journal of the IAWM is published four times a year (beginning in 2022). The Journal includes articles about women musicians, both contemporary and historic; interviews; reports on major conferences, congresses, and festivals; information on current research; members’ news; IAWM news; and reviews of books, concerts, CDs, and scores.

Memoirs

Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon
ISBN: 0062295896
Publication Date: 2015-02-24
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Kim Gordon, founding member of Sonic Youth, fashion icon, and role model for a generation of women, now tells her story--a memoir of life as an artist, of music, marriage, motherhood, independence, and as one of the first women of rock and roll, written with the lyricism and haunting beauty of Patti Smith's Just Kids. Often described as aloof, Kim Gordon opens up as never before in Girl in a Band. Telling the story of her family, growing up in California in the '60s and '70s, her life in visual art, her move to New York City, the men in her life, her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, her music, and her band, Girl in a Band is a rich and beautifully written memoir. Gordon takes us back to the lost New York of the 1980s and '90s that gave rise to Sonic Youth, and the Alternative revolution in popular music. The band helped build a vocabulary of music--paving the way for Nirvana, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins and many other acts. But at its core, Girl in a Band examines the route from girl to woman in uncharted territory, music, art career, what partnership means--and what happens when that identity dissolves. Evocative and edgy, filled with the sights and sounds of a changing world and a transformative life, Girl in a Band is the fascinating chronicle of a remarkable journey and an extraordinary artist.
Tranny by Laura Jane Grace; Dan Ozzi (As told to)
ISBN: 9780316387958
Publication Date: 2016-11-15
ONE OF BILLBOARD'S "100 GREATEST MUSIC BOOKS OF ALL TIME": The provocative transgender advocate and lead singer of the punk rock band Against Me! provides a searing account of her search for identity and her true self. It began in a bedroom in Naples, Florida, when a misbehaving punk teenager named Tom Gabel, armed with nothing but an acoustic guitar and a headful of anarchist politics, landed on a riff. Gabel formed Against Me! and rocketed the band from its scrappy beginnings - banging on a drum kit made of pickle buckets-to a major-label powerhouse that critics have called this generation's The Clash. Since its inception in 1997, Against Me! has been one of punk's most influential modern bands, but also one of its most divisive. With every notch the four-piece climbed in their career, they gained new fans while infuriating their old ones. They suffered legal woes, a revolving door of drummers, and a horde of angry, militant punks who called them "sellouts" and tried to sabotage their shows at every turn. But underneath the public turmoil, something much greater occupied Gabel-a secret kept for 30 years, only acknowledged in the scrawled-out pages of personal journals and hidden in lyrics. Through a troubled childhood, delinquency, and struggles with drugs, Gabel was on a punishing search for identity. Not until May of 2012 did a Rolling Stone profile finally reveal it: Gabel is a transsexual, and would from then on be living as a woman under the name Laura Jane Grace. Tranny is the intimate story of Against Me!'s enigmatic founder, weaving the narrative of the band's history, as well as Grace's, with dozens of never-before-seen entries from the piles of journals Grace kept. More than a typical music memoir about sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll - although it certainly has plenty of that - Tranny is an inside look at one of the most remarkable stories in the history of rock.
I Put a Spell on You by Nina Simone; Stephen Cleary
ISBN: 0679410686
Publication Date: 1992-02-25
The mesmerizing autobiography of one of the most revered soul, jazz, and blues divas of our time - the late Nina Simone.
Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys by Viv Albertine
ISBN: 9781250065995
Publication Date: 2014-11-25
A feminist musician icon, Viv Albertine reveals the rocking, uncompromising story of her life on the front lines at the birth of the British punk movement and beyond in this exciting, humorous, and inspiring memoir. Selected by the New York Times as one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years. Viv Albertine is a pioneer. As lead guitarist and songwriter for the seminal band The Slits, she influenced a future generation of artists including Kurt Cobain and Carrie Brownstein. She formed a band with Sid Vicious and was there the night he met Nancy Spungeon. She tempted Johnny Thunders...toured America with the Clash...dated Mick Jones...and inspired the classic Clash anthem "Train in Vain." But Albertine was no mere muse. In Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys., Albertine delivers a unique and unfiltered look at a traditionally male-dominated scene. Her story is so much more than a music memoir. Albertine's narrative is nothing less than a fierce correspondence from a life on the fringes of culture. The author recalls rebelling from conformity and patriarchal society ever since her days as an adolescent girl in the same London suburb of Muswell Hill where the Kinks formed. With brash honesty--and an unforgiving memory--Albertine writes of immersing herself into punk culture among the likes of the Sex Pistols and the Buzzcocks. Of her devastation when the Slits broke up and her reinvention as a director and screenwriter. Or abortion, marriage, motherhood, and surviving cancer. Navigating infidelity and negotiating divorce. And launching her comeback as a solo artist with her debut album, The Vermilion Border. Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. is a raw chronicle of music, fashion, love, sex, feminism, and more that connects the early days of punk to the Riot Grrl movement and beyond. But even more profoundly, Viv Albertine's remarkable memoir is the story of an empowered woman staying true to herself and making it on her own in the modern world.
Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein
ISBN: 9781594486630
Publication Date: 2015-10-27
From the guitarist of the pioneering band Sleater-Kinney, the book Kim Gordon says "everyone has been waiting for" and a New York Times Notable Book of 2015-- a candid, funny, and deeply personal look at making a life--and finding yourself--in music. Before Carrie Brownstein became a music icon, she was a young girl growing up in the Pacific Northwest just as it was becoming the setting for one the most important movements in rock history. Seeking a sense of home and identity, she would discover both while moving from spectator to creator in experiencing the power and mystery of a live performance. With Sleater-Kinney, Brownstein and her bandmates rose to prominence in the burgeoning underground feminist punk-rock movement that would define music and pop culture in the 1990s. They would be cited as "America's best rock band" by legendary music critic Greil Marcus for their defiant, exuberant brand of punk that resisted labels and limitations, and redefined notions of gender in rock. HUNGER MAKES ME A MODERN GIRL is an intimate and revealing narrative of her escape from a turbulent family life into a world where music was the means toward self-invention, community, and rescue. Along the way, Brownstein chronicles the excitement and contradictions within the era's flourishing and fiercely independent music subculture, including experiences that sowed the seeds for the observational satire of the popular television series Portlandia years later. With deft, lucid prose Brownstein proves herself as formidable on the page as on the stage. Accessibly raw, honest and heartfelt, this book captures the experience of being a young woman, a born performer and an outsider, and ultimately finding one's true calling through hard work, courage and the intoxicating power of rock and roll.
My Love Story by Tina Turner
ISBN: 9781501198243
Publication Date: 2018-10-16
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. Tina Turner--the long-reigning queen of rock & roll and living legend--sets the record straight about her illustrious career and complicated personal life in this eye-opening and compelling memoir. From her early years in Nutbush, Tennessee to her rise to fame alongside Ike Turner to her phenomenal success in the 1980s and beyond, Tina candidly examines her personal history, from her darkest hours to her happiest moments and everything in between. My Love Story is an explosive and inspiring story of a woman who dared to break any barriers put in her way. Emphatically showcasing Tina's signature blend of strength, energy, heart, and soul, this is a gorgeously wrought memoir as enthralling and moving as any of her greatest hits.
Lady Sings the Blues by Billie Holiday; William Dufty
ISBN: 0140067620
Publication Date: 1984-03-06
This work presents the Billie Holiday story - her rise to the top from the slums and the streets, to the eventual slide down.
No Walls and the Recurring Dream by Ani DiFranco
ISBN: 9780735225176
Publication Date: 2019-05-07
In her new memoir, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, Ani DiFranco recounts her early life from a place of hard-won wisdom, combining personal expression, the power of music, feminism, political activism, storytelling, philanthropy, entrepreneurship, and much more into an inspiring whole. In these frank, honest, passionate, and often funny pages is the tale of one woman's eventful and radical journey to the age of thirty. Ani's coming of age story is defined by her ethos of fierce independence--from being an emancipated minor sleeping in a Buffalo bus station, to unwaveringly building a career through appearances at small clubs and festivals, to releasing her first album at the age of 18, to consciously rejecting the mainstream recording industry and creating her own label, Righteous Babe Records. In these pages, as in life, she never hesitates to challenge established rules and expectations, maintaining a level of artistic integrity that has impressed many and antagonized more than a few. Ani continues to be a major touring and recording artist as well as a celebrated activist and feminist, standing as living proof that you can overcome all personal and societal obstacles to be who you are and to follow your dreams.

Documentaries

The Girls in the Band: Female Jazz Musicians by Judy Chaikin
In the thirties and forties, hundreds of women musicians toured the country in glamorous All-Girl Bands, while others played side by side with their male counterparts. Yet by the mid-fifties female jazz musicians had literally disappeared from the workplace; their names, their contributions to music, completely forgotten. Exploring the poignant, untold stories of female jazz and big band instrumentalists and their fascinating, groundbreaking journeys from the late 30s to the present day.
The Punk Singer: A Documentary Film about Kathleen Hanna by Sini Anderson
A look at the life of activist, musician, and cultural icon Kathleen Hanna, who formed the punk band Bikini Kill and pioneered the "riot grrrl" movement of the 1990s.
What Happened, Miss Simone?
Classically trained pianist, dive-bar chanteuse, black power icon and legendary recording artist Nina Simone lived a life of brutal honesty, musical genius, and tortured melancholy. What Happened, Miss Simone? is a 2015 American biographical documentary film about Nina Simone directed by Liz Garbus. The film opened the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. The screening was followed by a tribute performance by John Legend. The film was released by Netflix on June 26, 2015.
20 Feet from Stardom
They are the voices behind the greatest rock, pop and R&B hits of all time, but no one knows their names. Now, in this award-winning documentary, director Morgan Neville shines the spotlight on the untold stories of such legendary background (backup) singers as Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, Judith Hill, and more. Includes behind-the-scenes footage, vintage live performances, and interviews with Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Mick Jagger, Stevie Wonder, and Bette Midler.
Riot acts: flaunting gender deviance in music performance by Madsen Minax
Riot acts is a 'trans-fabulous' rockumentary representing the multi-dimensional lives of transgender and gender variant musicians. A first-hand perspective of the intersections between gender performance and stage performance. Riot acts suggests that identities and bodies are undeniably political,and the journey within a trans experience isn't always one of the tragedy, but one of creativity and joy.
My Prairie Home by Chelsea McMullan
Award-winning filmmaker Chelsea McMullan takes audiences on a poetic journey through landscapes both real and emotional in My Prairie Home, an intimate portrait of transgender singer Rae Spoon. Neither a concert film nor a conventional biographical doc, this documentary-musical occupies a beautiful space in between. My Prairie Home is as bracingly personal and reflective as the songs of this acclaimed musician, who was born in Alberta and raised in a troubled and deeply religious home. McMullan tells Spoon's story through interviews, spoken performance and music, set to a backdrop of stunning images of the Canadian Prairies. As the camera captures Alberta's haunting landscapes from the windows of Greyhound buses and through the curtains of tiny motel rooms, McMullan immerses viewers in the indie musician's experiences and struggles, while Spoon's songs are brought to life via shows at truck-stop diners and imaginative staged visual interpretations. My Prairie Home is an unforgettable look at a unique Canadian artist.
Changing keys: the Sara Davis Buechner story by Jack Fox
A biography of a prominent world-class concert pianist, the woman who cost him his career, and the story of how she got it back. Through it all, the same two hands tickle the ivories.
True Trans with Laura Jane Grace
The story of Punk rock singer Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! who came out as a woman in 2012, and other members of the trans community whose experiences are woefully underrepresented and misunderstood in the media.
Sisters with Transistors
Sisters With Transistors is the remarkable untold story of electronic music's female pioneers, composers who embraced machines and their liberating technologies to utterly transform how we produce and listen to music today.
Fanny: the right to rock by Bobbi Jo Hart
Sometime in the 1960s, in sunny Sacramento, two Filipina-American sisters got together with other teenage girls to play music. Little did they know their garage band would evolve into the legendary rock group Fanny, the first all-women band to release an LP with a major record label (Warner/Reprise, 1970). Despite releasing 5 critically-acclaimed albums over 5 years, touring with famed bands from SLADE to CHICAGO and amassing a dedicated fan base of music legends including David Bowie, Fanny's groundbreaking impact in music was written out of history... until bandmates reunite 50 years later with a new rock record deal. With incredible archival footage of the band's rocking past intercut with its next chapter releasing a new LP today, the film includes interviews with a large cadre of music icons, including Def Leppard's Joe Elliott, Bonnie Raitt, The Go-Go's Kathy Valentine, Todd Rundgren, The Runaways' Cherie Currie, Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian, The B52's Kate Pierson, Charles Neville and David Bowie guitarist and bassist Earl Slick and Gail Ann Dorsey. Fighting early barriers of race, gender and sexuality in the music industry, and now ageism, the incredible women of Fanny are ready to claim their hallowed place in the halls of rock 'n' roll fame.
Poly Styrene: I am a cliché by Celeste Bell and Paul Sng
The death of punk icon and X-Ray Spex front-woman Poly Styrene sends her daughter on a journey through her mother's archives in this intimate documentary.
Invisible by T.J. Parsell
This documentary explores a group of gay women songwriters who have successfully navigated the male dominated country music genre and have written number 1 hits for some of country music's greatest stars.

Podcasts

Bandsplain
Bandsplain is a show where host Yasi Salek invites experts to explain cult bands and iconic artists—and why people love them—using a curated playlist to help you understand the hype.
Just A Girl
Where we discuss intersectional feminism in the music industry. Aiming to make the scene a safer space one episode at a time!
Angry Grrrl Music of the Indie Rock Persuasion
Angry Grrrl Music of the Indie Rock Persuasion is a feminist podcast highlighting and giving a platform to women, LGBTQ+, and minority movements in the punk rock & indie rock scenes.
My 90s Playlist
The 90s are back in so many ways, but our favorite tracks never left. My 90s Playlist breaks down why we love the hits of the 90s so much, what made our favorite songs so popular back then, and why we are so nostalgic for them now. Throughout the season, our hosts Tracy Clayton and Akoto Ofori-Atta will celebrate their picks for a quintessential 90s playlist and explore the work of Backstreet Boys, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, A Tribe Called Quest and more!
The Jump with Shirley Manson
There’s nothing better than a breakthrough – when all the hard work pays off and gold is struck. In season three of The Jump, acclaimed musician Shirley Manson and world-renowned artists take stock of those moments while examining the songs that changed their careers.
Women in Hip Hop
The Women In Hip Hop with Jazzie Belle podcast is a catalyst for discussing the importance of amplifying women’s voices and encouraging young girls to be both self-sufficient and confident through the lens of hip hop. Previous guests include rappers such as Roxanne Shante, West Coast star and protege of rapper/actor Ice Cube, Yo-Yo, multi-platinum R&B superstar Faith Evans and “The Queen of All Media“, Wendy Williams.
Pass the Mic
Pass The Mic is a Twin Cities-based podcast dedicated to women, trans, and non-binary folks in music. The podcast aims to give representation to female, trans, and non-binary artists and industry professionals by highlighting their work and giving them a role in constructing their own stories.
Good as Hell
Going on record with the queens of hip hop & R&B, with Lizzo.
Gayotic
Having been described by the press as “occasionally hard-to-follow,” “as chaotic as they are iconic,” and “going through it,” MUNA started this podcast with the hope of providing not only more income, but also rare insight into the behavior of queers outside of the month of June. Join them as they gab about their personal lives, music, what they like to eat, intergenerational trauma, and of course their search for answers in the case of a missing girl. Once they make friends, they will also have them as guests on the show.
So When You Gonna...
The aim of the series is to encourage the band's listeners to start something new, to pursue their creative interests and also to provide advice on navigating the arts and creative industries. Each episode is a one-on-one interview with a different creative, connected with Dream Wife, about how exactly they managed to hone their craft. The band have interviewed friends, collaborators and people whom also inspire them across multiple creative fields.

Recent Additions

The Media Manifesto

Our media systems are in crisis. Run by unaccountable corporations and dominated by agendas and algorithms that are shrouded in mystery, these formerly trusted sources of information and entertainment have lost their way. As consumers, we have plenty of choice, but as citizens we have an abundance of misinformation and misrepresentation. In this incisive manifesto, four prominent media scholars and activists put forth a roadmap for radical reform of concentrated media power. They argue that we should put media justice, economic democracy and social equality at the heart of our scholarship and our campaigning.

Media, Migrants and Human Rights. in the Evolution of the European Scenario of Refugees' and Asylum Seekers' Instances

The volume is a collection of essays - the result of studies, research, projects - on the theme of migration, of the condition of refugees and asylum seekers, of respect for or violation of human rights, of the narration of these events in the media. It offers a lucid glance, through the voice of several scholars, of the European scenario and its evolution in recent years.

The Media-Democracy Paradox in Ghana

This volume focuses on the matrix offered by the media-democracy paradox in Ghana, Africa, and the Global South. As the first black African country south of the Sahara to attain political independence from Great Britain, Ghana is widely acknowledged by the international community as a model of democracy. This book examines the praxis of this democracy and its media, delving into Ghana's evolvement, media practices, leadership aspirations, pressure group politics, and ideological cleavages.

Mediating Multiculturalism

Using digital storytelling--a new media genre that began in California in the late 1990s and that proliferated across 'the West' in the 2000s--as a site of analysis, this book asks, 'What is done in the name of the everyday?' Like everyday multiculturalism, digital storytelling is promoted as an accessible, enabling, and ordinary phenomenon that represents cultural experience more accurately than official sites. As such, the genre frequently houses stories of migration, community, and ethnic and racial differences.

Modernist Magazines and the Social Ideal

The new photo-illustrated magazines of the 1920s traded in images of an ideal modernity, promising motorised leisure, scientific progress, and social and sexual emancipation. Modernist Magazines and the Social Ideal is a pioneering history of these periodicals, focusing on two of the leading European titles- the German monthly UHU, and the French news weekly VU, taken as representative of the broad class of popular titles launched in the 1920s. The book is the first major study of UHU, and the first scholarly work on VU in English.

Monsters

What are Monsters? Monsters are everywhere, from cyberbullies online to vampires onscreen: the twenty-first century is a monstrous age. The root of the word «monster» means «omen» or «warning», and if monsters frighten us, it's because they are here to warn us about something amiss in ourselves and in our society. Humanity has given birth to these monsters, and they grow and change with us, carrying the scars of their birth with them. This collection of original and accessible essays looks at a variety of contemporary monsters from literature, film, television, music and the internet within their respective historical and cultural contexts.

News 2. 0

Offers fresh insights and empirical evidence on the producers, consumers, and content of News 2.0. The second generation of news--News 2.0--made, distributed, and consumed on the internet, particularly social media, has forever changed the news business. News 2.0: Journalists, Audiences and News on Social Media examines the ways in which news production is sometimes biased and how social networking sites (SNS) have become highly personalized news platforms that reflect users' preferences and world views.

News on the American Dream

News on the American Dream traces the development of the PortugueseAmerican press from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century to the present, taking readers from the East Coast to Hawaii, with strategic stops in places with large Portuguese communities, including New Bedford, Massachusetts; Oakland, California; and Newark, New Jersey. Alberto Pena Rodríguez's nuanced analysis of the political, economic, social, and cultural roles played by these publications proves how important they were for the PortugueseAmerican community and the history of the ethnic press in the United States.

No Laughing Matter: Race Joking and Resistance in Brazilian Social Media

'No Laughing Matter: Race Joking and Resistance in Brazilian Social Media' examines the social phenomenon of construction and dissemination of colonial-like racist discourses fostered against upwardly-mobile black women through disparagement humour on social media platforms, adopting a fresh and innovative perspective. In this book, Luiz Valerio P. Trindade explores the idea that disparagement humour might not be as exempt of social impact as the jokers might believe, and that, in fact, this kind of humour reveals the hidden facet of deep-seated colonial ideologies still present in Brazilian society despite being hailed as a unique model of a post-racial society.

Sex Work, Health, and Human Rights

This open access book provides a comprehensive overview of the health inequities and human rights issues faced by sex workers globally across diverse contexts, and outlines evidence-based strategies and best practices. Sex workers face severe health and social inequities, largely as the result of structural factors including punitive and criminalized legal environments, stigma, and social and economic exclusion and marginalization. Although previous work has largely emphasized an elevated burden and gaps in HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) services in sex work, less attention has been paid to the broader health and human rights concerns faced by sex workers. This contributed volume addresses this gap. The chapters feature a variety of perspectives including academic, community, implementing partners, and government to synthesize research evidence as well as lessons learned from local-level experiences across different regions, and are organized under three parts: Burden of health and human rights inequities faced by sex workers globally, including infectious diseases (e.g., HIV, STIs), violence, sexual and reproductive health, and drug use.

Punk Identities, Punk Utopias

Explores the notion of identities, ideologies, and cultural discourse in contemporary global punk scenes. Punk Identities, Punk Utopias unpacks punk and the factors that shape its increasingly complex and indefinable social, political, and economic setting. The third offering in Intellect's Global Punk series, produced in collaboration with the Punk Scholars Network, this volume examines the broader social, political, and technological concerns that affect punk scenes around the world, from digital technology and new media to gender, ethnicity, identity, and representation. Drawing on scholarship in cultural studies, musicology, and social sciences, this interdisciplinary collection will add to the academic discussion of contemporary popular culture, particularly in relation to punk and the critical understanding of transnational and cross-cultural dialogue.

The Politics of Laughter in the Social Media Age

The Politics of Laughter in the Social Media Age: Perspectives from the Global South brings to critical and intellectual attention the role of humour in the digital era in the Global South. Many citizens of the Global South live disempowered and precarious lives. Digital media and humour, as chapters in the volume demonstrate, have empowered these citizens through engagement with power and their peers, enabling a pursuit of a better future. Contributors to the volume, while alive to challenges associated with the digital divide, highlight the potentials of social media and humour to engage and seek redress on issues such as corruption, human rights violations, racism and sexism. Contributors expertly analyse memes, videos, cartoons and other social media texts to demonstrate how citizens mimic, disrupt, ridicule and challenge status quo. This book caters for academics and students in media and communication studies, political studies, sociology and Global South studies.

The Oxford Handbook of Queer Cinema

The term "queer cinema" is often used to name at least three cultural events: 1) an emergent visual culture that boldly identifies as queer; 2) a body of narrative, documentary, and experimental work previously collated under the rubric of homosexual or lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBT) cinema; 3) a means of critically reading and evaluating films and other visual media through the lens of sexuality. By this expansive account, queer cinema encompasses more than a century of filmmaking, film criticism, and film reception, and the past twenty-five years have seen the idea of "queer cinema" expand further as a descriptor for a global arts practice. As the first of its kind, The Oxford Handbook of Queer Cinema treats these three currents as art and critical practice, bringing the canon of queer cinema together with a new generation of makers and scholars.

Music Documentaries for Radio

"Drawing on both academic research and real world practice, this book offers an in-depth investigation into the production of music documentaries broadcast on radio. Music Documentaries for Radio provides a thorough overview of how the genre has developed technically and editorially alongside a discussion of the practical production processes involved. Digital production equipment and online tools used in music documentary production are discussed in detail, outlining how the development of these technologies shapes the output of producers operating in both the public service and the commercial sectors of the industry."--

A Fan Studies Primer

The discipline of fan studies is famously undisciplined. But that doesn't mean it isn't structured. This is the first comprehensive primer for classroom use that shows students how to do fan studies in practical terms. With contributions from a range of established and emerging scholars, coeditors Paul Booth and Rebecca Williams pull together case studies that demonstrate the wide array of methodologies available to fan studies scholars, such as auto/ethnography, immersion, interviews, online data mining, historiography, and textual analysis. This collection also probes the ethical questions that are unique to fan studies work, such as the use of online fan content for research, interview methods, consent, and privacy.

Screening Love and War in Troy: Fall of a City

This is the first volume of essays published on the television series Troy: Fall of a City (BBC One and Netflix, 2018). Covering a wide range of engaging topics, such as gender, race and politics, international scholars in the fields of classics, history and film studies discuss how the story of Troy has been recreated on screen to suit the expectations of modern audiences. The series is commended for the thought-provoking way it handles important issues arising from the Trojan War narrative that continue to impact our society today. With discussions centered on epic narrative, cast and character, as well as tragic resonances, the contributors tackle gender roles by exploring the innovative ways in which mythological female figures such as Helen, Aphrodite and the Amazons are depicted in the series. An examination is also made into the concept of the hero and how the series challenges conventional representations of masculinity.

All Media Studies Guides

Contributors' Notes

Brett Hoffman (they/them) - Arts & Humanities Library Assistant, 2019-'21

Wendy Lee Spaček (she/her) - Arts & Humanities Library Assistant, 2019-'21

McLain Chadsey (he/him) - Arts & Humanities Library Assistant, 2021-'22

Jo Otremba (they/them) - Arts & Humanities Library Assistant, 2022-present

Erin Lee Walden (she/her) - Arts & Humanities Library Assistant, 2022-present

Sarah Vitelli (she/her) - Arts & Humanities Library Assistant, 2023-present

Media Studies

Librarian for Media Studies, Gender Studies, & Philosophy

Land Acknowledgment & Resource Guide