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Beyond Sex and the City: Becoming a Woman in Contemporary Western Cinema

Module description

On this module you will study contemporary films (1990s onwards) from American and European cinema that map out girls, girlhood and coming-of-age. It is designed to enable students from a wide range of backgrounds such as English, Modern Languages, History, Politics and Philosophy to engage critically with some key ideas concerning filmic representation of contemporary girlhood and its aesthetic, cultural and political meanings. Prior experience of film study is not necessary. The focus of the module is on how film articulates certain tropes, and how they may shore up or allow space for critique of what has been labeled a ‘post-feminist’ culture. Major themes include emotion and affect on film; sexualisation of mainstream culture; diversity and race; and performance.

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module aims to appeal to students from a wide range of backgrounds such as English, DML, History, Politics and Philosophy. It aims to enable you to:

• Study contemporary films from European cinema that map out the fraught process of attaining adult femininity
• Examine how a range of filmic European cultures, in both art house and popular modes, represent and refract the status of young women in contemporary society against a backdrop of anxiety concerning the sexualisation of young women and the status of feminism
• Draw upon the theories of post-feminism and place these into a comparative context, including an engagement with cinema produced in Hollywood that also impacts upon European audiences
• Debate and critique representations of femininity within a range of cinematic cultures
• Discuss and articulate a range of feminist and postfeminist positions and ideas
• Appreciate and understand a wide range of films, drawn from both ‘popular’ and ‘art-house’ traditions, and their articulation of female life stages, and the political and aesthetic consequences of this
• Apply a range of theoretical concerns to films and television programmes with which you may be familiar already

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate an informed understanding and detailed knowledge of the works studied on the module
• 2. Demonstrate an understanding of their significance in the broader cultural context in which they were produced
• 3. Demonstrate an informed understanding of a number of key debates in feminist and postfeminist theory and an ability to apply these to film

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 4. After initial input from the course tutor(s), apply and evaluate critical approaches to the material under analysis independently
• 5. Argue at length and in detail about an aspect of the topic, supporting the argument with evidence from the text and with opinions from secondary literature
• 6. Use a range of film-critical terminology, applying it to independently researched material as well as to material introduced by the course tutor(s)
• 7. Access and use critically printed and, where appropriate, electronic learning resources identified as useful by the course tutor(s); find independently and evaluate critically other relevant resources.
• 8. Analyse films in a variety of genres and styles, showing awareness of their relation to the social, historical and generic context in which they were written, and present the results orally and in writing

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 9. Through essay writing, demonstrate appropriate research and bibliographic skills, a capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument and a capacity to write clear and correct prose
• 10. Through research for seminars and essays, demonstrate proficiency in independent information retrieval and analysis
• 11. Through research seminar discussion, and essay writing demonstrate a capacity to question assumptions, to distinguish between fact and opinion, and to critically reflect on your own learning process

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• Emotion and affect on film
• Sexualisation of mainstream culture
• Diversity and race
• Performance

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Cinema Journal, 44: 2, Winter, 2005 – Special edition on postfeminism
• Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young, Chick Flicks: Contemporary Women at the Movies (London andNew York: Routledge, 2008),
• Rosalind Gill, ‘Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a sensibility’ in European Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 10 (2), 147-166
• Rosalind Gill, Gender and the Media (Cambridge: Polity, 2007)
• Rosalind Gill and Christina Scharff, New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
• Anita Harris, Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty First Century (London: Routledge, 2004)
• Anita Harris (ed.), All About the Girl: Culture, Power and Identity (London: Routledge, 2004)
• Joanne Hollows and Rachel Moseley (eds), Feminism in Popular Culture, (Oxford,New York: Berg, 2006)
• Angela McRobbie: The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change (London: Sage, 2009)
• Tania Modleski, Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticism in a “Postfeminist Age” (London: Routledge, 1991)
• Anoop Nayak and Mary Jane Kehily, Gender, Youth and Culture: Young Masculinities and Femininities (London: Palgrave, 2007?)
• Diane Negra and Yvonne Tasker (eds), Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture (Duke University Press, 2007)
• Diane Negra, ‘ “Quality Postfeminism?”: Sex and the Single Girl on HBO’, Genders Online Journal, 39: 2004
• Diane Negra, What A Girl Wants?: Fantasizing the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism (London: Routledge, 2009)
• Sarah Projansky, Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture (New YorkUniversity Press, 2001)
• Hilary Radner, Neo-Feminist Cinema, Girly Films, Chick Flicks and Consumer Culture (New York: Routledge, 2011)
• Imelda Whelehan, Overloaded: Popular Culture and the Future of Feminism (London: Women’s Press, 2000)

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE: https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=11666

Key words search

Post-feminism, feminism, European cinema, girlhood