“Feminist film theory presented in the lucid critical polyphony gathered with unerring critical instinct by Marcelline Block will insist upon a dynamic and mobile attitude facing the gaze.”—Jean-Michel Rabaté, Vartan Gregorian Professor in the Humanities, University of Pennsylvania“This volume, given the breadth of the editor’s choices, makes a splendid contribution to an array of feminist and cinematic fields, as well as cultural studies, media studies, postmodernism and postfeminism. The book may have the effect of inciting readers to reconsider stable methodologies and to conceptualize previously unthought-of ways to approach the gendered/cinematic gaze, performativity of gender and the reshaping of classic feminist film theory in the 21st century. This book lends its readers ‘new eyes’ with which to view canonical texts. The book, upon publication, may very well play a role as a significant scholarly resource; nor is this to forget its other role, that of a textbook for upper/lower-level university courses in departments of film, gender studies, cultural and media studies, among others. I fully recommend this book. I can even imagine I, myself, teaching parts of the book in my seminars on semiotics.”—Marshall Blonsky, PhD, New School University “This volume will be invaluable in helping readers to look afresh at questions of gender, sexuality, and representation in the light of the methodological, aesthetic, and strategic shifts outlined here . . . Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Postwar Cinema includes fresh, bold, and new voices alongside very well established scholars in the field, and will no doubt make an important and dynamic contribution to conversations about the role of feminism in contemporary film theory and history. I look forward to teaching sections of this book in a variety of courses, including my courses on film theory, women and film, and the Road Movie.”—Karen Beckman, Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Associate Professor of Film Studies; Director, Program in Cinema Studies, University of Pennsylvania“Marcelline Block has edited a compelling collection of essays which includes illuminating discussions of contemporary European and North American filmmakers in which issues pertaining to film theory and women’s studies intersect . . . This is a rich volume and important new book that recontextualizes key concepts by renowned feminist film theorists, and succeeds in reframing those crucial early insights within a new conceptual and historical configuration of feminist film theory in tune with recent cinematic production and historical and cultural realities.”—Gabriel Riera, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese, University of Illinois, Chicago“I will say at the outset that the volume makes valuable, original, and often unique contributions to a remarkably wide array of feminist and cinematic fields. Its essays should be required reading for scholars, students, and general readers who care about cinema’s increasingly complex interactions with contemporary culture at large. The range and variety of the chapters constitute one of the book’s best assets, especially since their diversified contents rarely lose sight of the collection’s unifying concern(s) with the ways in which major issues of feminist and postfeminist theory are currently articulated by and through engagements with the politics, aesthetics, and practices of gender, sexuality, authorship, and representation in today’s moving-image media. A welcome byproduct of Marcelline Block’s approach is the rare (and badly needed) consideration given to filmmakers whose unconventional methods and techniques are chronically overlooked (even by many supposedly enlightened critics) precisely because they grow from a recognition that female/feminist filmmakers must conduct risky experiments with the medium if there is to be a chance of overturning the commercial-patriarchal cinema (a cinéma du papa in every sense) that has dominated and determined patterns of production, distribution, exhibition, and reception since the early days of cinema. I must add a note of appreciation for Marcelline Block’s introduction, which amounts to a concisely written summary of where feminist and postfeminist theory have recently been and are situated at the present time, and a richly suggestive view of where they are likely to be in the near future. Marcelline Block and her colleagues are in the forefront of the growing number of scholars who remember that Mulvey’s influential essay concludes with a call for using film theory as a political weapon capable of challenging, disputing, and ultimately overturning the engines of patriarchal bias that have operated for more than a century through the easily exploited conduits of mass-media visual expression. Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Postwar Cinema will play an important part in academic, sociopolitical, and film-cultural skirmishes for a long time to come.” —David Sterritt, PhD, School of the Arts, Columbia University, Liberal Arts, Maryland Institute College of Art; Professor Emeritus of Theater and Film, Long Island University Chair, National Society of Film Critics, Editorial Board, Quarterly Review of Film and Video; Distinguished Visiting Faculty, Goldring Arts Journalism, Syracuse University“Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Postwar Cinema is a valuable resource for advanced scholarly research and is recommended for motivated upper-division undergraduate students (by motivated, I mean those undergraduates that are up for a challenge), graduate students and faculty. The scope of the collection's articles is quite vast, and thus will have a broad appeal while at the same time offering substantive content to researchers looking to integrate new material into specific course design or research.”—Eileen M. Angelini, Professor of French, Canisius College (Women in French Studies, vol. 18, 2010, 163-164)“This diverse collection of fourteen essays engages scholars in reflecting upon and (re)viewing cinema’s increasingly complex and far-reaching relationship with contemporary culture.. . . allows for inclusion of bracing readings of films and auteurs not readily considered mainstream, as well as reconsiderations of more well-known works.This collection would serve well primarily as a scholarly resource, and secondarily as a textbook for university courses at the graduate level. For those who teach courses with an emphasis on French cinema, culture, and recent history, Block’s efforts help to bring French cinema into an interdisciplinary focus.The films under discussion come from several countries and cultures, which broadens the examination of the feminist perspective in postwar cinema.The substantive, interdisciplinary, and internationalist approach is one of the collection’s major strengths.”—Eileen M. Angelini, Professor of French, Canisius College (NY), The French Review, vol. 84, no. 5, April 2011, p. 1047“Ultimately, Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Postwar Cinema represents a fresh and innovating addition to existing theories and methods of critical and aesthetical inquiry into women and cinema. The variety of theoretical models used by the contributors in this volume suggests that the feminist gaze today can and should be revisited from a de-centered, de-hierarchisized position. Perhaps, as some of the authors imply, a Deleuzian perspective which allows for multiple horizontal readings rather than a vertical, dual interpretive paradigm would be a more appropriate mode of investigation. By advocating a non-monolithic approach to feminist and postfeminist cinema, the book successfully ties together multiple points of view and effectively rewrites the discourse on the gaze using a new language without rejecting the old.”—Marzia Caporale, University of Scranton, Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Literature, Volume 34, No. 2 (Summer 2010), p. 339