Helen Thornham and Elke Weissmann (eds.), Renewing Feminisms: Radical Narratives, Fantasies and Futures in Media Studies, London, New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013.

The feminist movement, we have been told, is history. This lively book proposes that on the contrary the feminist movement is alive and kicking, still as engaged with the concerns and ways of seeing as it was in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s; still demanding its political place. Renewing Feminisms sets out the claim for a feminism that is renewed, reinvigorated and re-imagined. The book offers a timely contribution to current debates about lived and imagined feminism today. The contributors, both longstanding feminists and emerging feminist scholars, take a fresh look at feminist critiques and methodologies, recalling the power of past feminist interventions, as well as presenting a new call for future initiatives in media and cultural studies. They revisit major feminist areas, investigating representational issues, those of agency and narrative, media forms and formats, and the traditional boundaries of the public and the private. What emerges is a real intervention into media and cultural studies in terms of how we understand them today.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Renewing-Retooling Feminisms | Helen Thornham and Elke Weissmann

The BFI Women and Film Study Group 1976 – ? | Christine Geraghty

Section 1: Relaying Feminism

• Relaying Feminism: Introduction
• Rebranding Feminism: Post-Feminism, Popular Culture and the Academy | Sue Thornham
• Third-Wave Feminism and the University: On Pedagogy and Feminist Resurgence | Kristin Aune

Section 2: Lived Feminist Identities

• Lived and Imagined Feminist Identities: Introduction
• Classy Subjects | Maureen McNeil
• Imagining Her(story): Engendering Archives | Roshini Kempadoo
• Weaving the Life of Guatemala: Reflections of the Self and Others through Visual Representations | Sonia De La Cruz

Section 3: From Soap Opera to

• From Soap Opera to … : Introduction
• ‘They’re ‘Doped’ by That Dale Diary’: Women’s Serial Drama, the BBC and British Post-war Change | Kristin Skoog
• Scheduling as Feminist Issue: UK’s Channel 4 and US Female-Centred Sitcoms | Elke Weissmann
• Separating the Women from the Girls: Reconfigurations of the Feminine in Contemporary British Drama | Vicky Ball

Section 4: Futuristic Feminisms

• Futuristic Feminisms: Introduction
• New Media, New Feminism: Evolving Feminist Analysis and Activism in Print, on the Web and Beyond | Andi Zeisler
• Articulating Technology and Imagining the User: Generating Gendered Divides across Media | Helen Thornham and Angela McFarlane
• Feminism, Expertise and the Computational Turn | Caroline Bassett

Conclusions | Anita Biressi and Heather Nunn

Bibliography

Index