This remarkable collection uses genre as a fresh way to analyze the issues of gender representation in film theory, film production, spectatorship, and the contexts of reception. With a uniquely global perspective, these essays examine the intersection of gender and genre in not only Hollywood films but also in independent, European, Indian, and Hong Kong cinemas. Working in the area of postcolonial cinema, contributors raise issues dealing with indigenous and global cinemas and argue that contemporary genres have shifted considerably as both notions of gender and forms of genre have changed. The volume addresses topics such as the history of feminist approaches to the study of genre in film, issues of female agency in postmodernity, changes taking place in supposedly male-dominated genres, concepts of genre and its use of gender in global cinema, and the relationship between gender and sexuality in film.

Contributors are Ira Bhaskar, Steven Cohan, Luke Collins, Pam Cook, Lucy Fischer, Jane Gaines, Christine Gledhill, Derek Kane-Meddock, E. Ann Kaplan, Samiha Matin, Katie Model, E. Deidre Pribram, Vicente Rodriguez Ortega, Adam Segal, Chris Straayer, Yvonne Tasker, Deborah Thomas, and Xiangyang Chen. | Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction PART ONE. REFIGURING GENRE AND GENDER 1. The Genius of Genre and Ingenuity of Women 2. No Fixed Address: The Women's Picture from Outrage to Blue Steel 3. Circulating Emotion: Race, Gender, and Genre in Crash 4. 100% Pure Adrenaline: Gender and Generic Surface in Point Break PART TWO. POSTFEMINISM AND GENERIC RE-INVENTIONS 5. Troubling Genre/Reconstructing Gender 6. Bodies and Genres in Transition: Girlfight and Real Women Have Curves 7. Private Femininity, Public Femininity: Tactical Aesthetics in the Costume Film 8. Generic Gleaning: Agnès Varda, Documentary, and the Art of Salvage PART THREE. GENDER AESTHETICS IN "MALE" GENRES 9. It's a Mann's World? 10. Up Close and Personal: Faces and Names in Casualties of War 11. Gender Hyperbole and the Uncanny in the Horror Film: The Shining PART FOUR. GENRE AND GENDER TRANSNATIONAL 12. Emotion, Subjectivity, and the Limits of Desire: Melodrama and Modernity in Bombay Cinema, 1940s-'50s 13 Woman, Generic Aesthetics, and the Vernacular: Huangmei Opera Films from China to Hong Kong 14. Homoeroticism Contained: Gender and Sexual Translation in John Woo's Migration to Hollywood PART FIVE. GENERIC "TRANS-INGS": BETWEEN GENRES, GENDERS, AND SEXUALITIES 15. Trash Comes Home: Gender/Genre Subversion in the Films of John Waters 16. Femme Fatale or Lesbian Femme: Bound in Sexual Différance 17. "The Gay Cowboy Movie": Queer Masculinity on Brokeback Mountain Contributors Index | "A superb collection of essays representing an exceptionally high order of film scholarship: thoughtful, insightful, and well-written. With provocative insights and stellar contributors, the volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of cinema studies." —Virginia Wright Wexman, coeditor of Women and Experimental Filmmaking
"These essays suggest that the dual conceits of genre and gender are no longer viable markers for how viewers watch films, and the traditional modes of identification have to be deconstructed in order to recognize this kind of spectatorial fluidity. Overall, this is an intriguing addition to the endless historiographical conversations that tie together its two subjects."—Film Matters
| Christine Gledhill is a professor of media studies at the University of Sunderland. She is the author or editor of numerous books, including Nationalising Femininity: Culture, Sexuality and British Cinema in the Second World War.