"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"The volume conjoins important new areas of study both in gender and medicine and in cultural studies of medicine. One of the great strengths of this volume is its historical as well as its disciplinary range from a consideration of Medieval art to contemporary television.The essays include treatments of the medical gaze in literary works as well as engagement with the literariness and visuality of medical publications (specifically, narrative, image, and language). The emphasis on gender gives this volume a tight, unifying focus. I am persuaded that it will have a broad audience among scholars across fields and disciplines and will be widely taught."—Professor Priscilla Wald, Professor of English and Women's Studies, Duke University"In light of current debates over healthcare, the volume could not be more timely. As a whole, it critiques the claim of the mimetic and objective, recognizes the instrumentality of representation, and examines definitions of normal and the stigmatization of disease and disfigurement. Individual essays work within interpretive models which puncture the myth of 'realism' and reveal reified realities; this critical context allows for interpreting the body as a contested site, delineates iconographic constructions which utilize strategies of containment, and shows the way in which narrative and visual representation often participates in the process of social training.These chapters underscore both the historical range and the geographical diversity of the volume. Each essay highlights the uniqueness of a specific historical moment, but also points towards the continuity of narrative and representational models and their interpretation across cultures."—Carl Fisher, Professor of Comparative Literature, Chair of Department, Comparative World Literature and Classics California State University Long Beach"The topic of the book is timely, innovative and important. While research into medicine and narrative has been developing over the past fifteen or so years, it has retained a heavily sociological bias or taken the form of personal reflections. What is important about the volume is both its emphasis on issues of medicine in representation and its focus specifically on gender. A further innovative aspect of the volume is its interdisciplinary focus that includes American and European literature, the media, philosophy and, of course, cultural studies and medicine. There are not only articles on a broad range of texts from classic fiction to the infamous television program House MD and the popular film, Children of Men (2006), but the volume covers books from 1796 to the contemporary period. It will be a valuable contribution to the fields of medicine, narrative, literature and the media."—E. Ann Kaplan, Stony Brook University, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies Director, The Humanities Institute at Stony Brook Past President, The Society for Cinema and Media Studies"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 have read the manuscript of Marcelline Block's edited collection Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Postwar Cinema with great interest, and I am pleased to submit the following observations. 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-bierarchisized 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