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Feminist Media Histories

@femmediahist.bsky.social

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Feminist Media Histories examines the role gender has played in media across a range of historical periods and global contexts. Published quarterly by UC Press. Sign up for our quarterly newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/kxDtFBP

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Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · 8d

For your GRADUATE students! Submissions for the SCMS Gender and Feminisms Caucus Graduate Student Writing Prize are due in ONE month on November 1, 2025. The winning essay will be published (subject to revision) in FMH.

online.ucpress.edu/fmh/pages/aw...

Awards | Feminist Media Histories | University of California Press

Awards | Feminist Media Histories | University of California Press Awards   SCMS Gender and Feminisms Caucus Graduate Student Writing Prize   The SCMS Gender and Feminisms ...

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Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · 2d

In 11.3, Rukmini Pande discusses how Lara Croft’s fans try and retrace her steps in real-world settings of the Tomb Raider universe, reinscribing the colonialist mechanics of the game on these locations. Read it for free!
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“You Can Be Lara Croft Too!”Examining the Extractive Colonial Logics of Tomb Raider Fan Tourism in Cambodia

Cultural heritage has been substantively identified as a vital motivator for tourism. An additional significant driver of visitor interest to specific historical locations is the influence of media pr...

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Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · 7d

See 2024 winner Samantha Silver's “'Funnier Than Moms Mabley': The Stand-Up Comedy of Hattie Noel" (FREE for the month of October: doi.org/10.1525/fmh....). And watch out for 2025 winner Isabel Bartholomew's "'Ugh, As If!': Clueless and the Incest Plot" in July's special issue on "Fashion and Media"

https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2025.11.1.172)—and

Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · 8d

For your GRADUATE students! Submissions for the SCMS Gender and Feminisms Caucus Graduate Student Writing Prize are due in ONE month on November 1, 2025. The winning essay will be published (subject to revision) in FMH.

online.ucpress.edu/fmh/pages/aw...

Awards | Feminist Media Histories | University of California Press

Awards | Feminist Media Histories | University of California Press Awards   SCMS Gender and Feminisms Caucus Graduate Student Writing Prize   The SCMS Gender and Feminisms ...

online.ucpress.edu

Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · 16d

FREE RESEARCH ARTICLE! Why did writers say Lara Croft was trans? What was her actual relationship to the “male gamer”? Look out for a guest appearance by Mario, and for the author’s own trans memories from the y2k era.

online.ucpress.edu/fmh/article/...

The Male Gamer and the Transness of Lara Croft

This article takes seriously two things: that Lara Croft is trans, and that I, a trans masculine games scholar and game maker, was a male gamer. Many scholars have rightly challenged the assumption th...

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Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · 29d

The article also previews research on Jolie’s celebrity philanthropy—which shooting Tomb Raider on location in Cambodia launched—that Molloy and Meryl Shriver-Rice are currently undertaking for a book on Jolie’s cinema and activism.

Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · 29d

New free article!

“Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft” explores the legacy of her star turn in Simon West’s 2001 blockbuster (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider), connecting it to fascinating shifts in women as top-billed, blockbuster action stars around the turn of the century.

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Angelina Jolie as Lara CroftGender, Celebrity, and Transnational Cinema

This article explores the multifaceted legacy of Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft with a focus on the first film devoted to the popular video game character, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. It presents Jolie’s p...

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Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · Aug 26

New free article! 😍

In this article, Trung M. Nguyen interrogates the issue of looted non-Western cultural objects by examining the performances of two women: Lara Croft and Sophiline Cheam-Shapiro, renowned Cambodian artist and dancer.

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Stolen ObjectsLara Croft the Tomb Raider vs. Sophiline Cheam-Shapiro the Cambodian Dancer

This article positions Angelina Jolie’s performance as Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) next to Sophiline Cheam-Shapiro’s unsanctioned Cambodian classical dance at the Metropolitan Museum ...

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Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · Aug 13

Free article! 🙂

Lara Croft has been viewed as a feminist icon for decades but her deep-seated colonial bias has often been ignored. In this article, Souvik Mukherjee explores the problematic coloniality of Lara as the 'tomb raider.'

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Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · Jul 25

The 11.3 issue of FMH is live! 🤩🥳

This issue is devoted to the 30th anniversary of Lara Croft, with every article discussing the character and the Tomb Raider franchise!

You can read the editors' introduction, written by Amanda Phillips and Josef Nguyen, below:

online.ucpress.edu/fmh/article/...

On 30 Years of Lara Croft

Thirty years ago, a star emerged.This Feminist Media Histories special issue prepares for the 30th anniversary of the introduction of video game character-turned-pop culture icon Lara Croft in 2026. F...

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Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · Jul 15

We have a new CFP!

A special issue on Feminist Archaeologies of Desktop media, guest edited by Jiří Anger & Veronika Hanáková.

The deadline for proposals is October 28, 2025.

Read the full CFP below:

online.ucpress.edu/fmh/pages/cfp

Call for Papers | Feminist Media Histories | University of California Press

Call for Papers | Feminist Media Histories | University of California Press CALLS FOR PAPERS Special Issue on the Long 1970s Guest Editors: Navaneetha Mokkil & Nitya Vasudevan Pr...

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Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · Jul 15

New free article!

In this essay, Katerina Korola looks at filmmaker and zoologist Lola Kreutzberg's ethnographic film Bali, das Wunderlan (1927), and assesses the construction of the Weimar New Woman in a wider colonial field.

online.ucpress.edu/fmh/article/...

The New Woman as EthnographerLola Kreutzberg in the Dutch East Indies

In 1926, the German zoologist, photographer, and filmmaker Lola Kreutzberg toured the Indonesian archipelago, gathering material for her now lost film Bali, das Wunderland (Bali, the Isle of Wonders, ...

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Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · Jul 1

Free article alert! 💞

In this essay, Ankita Deb examines how nontheatrical films on sex education from Europe and North America were recirculated by B-circuit filmmakers in India and, in so doing, suffused with feminist and queer possibilities.

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Sensationalizing Nontheatrical CinemaThe Feminist and Queer Possibilities of Sex Education Films in Postcolonial India

In this essay, I examine how nontheatrical films on sex education from Europe and North America were recirculated by B-circuit filmmakers in India and in so doing suffused them with feminist and queer...

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Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · Jun 16

New free article! 🥳

Liz Czach shines a light on Judith Crawley whose film, Four New Apple Dishes (1940), makes evident how some women-identified filmmakers made nontheatrical films for and about women.

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Nontheatrical Films for WomenJudith Crawley’s Four New Apple Dishes (1940)

In 1940 Judith Crawley was commissioned by John Grierson, head of the National Film Board of Canada, to make a film about cooking with apples. The resulting film, Four New Apple Dishes, made on the ec...

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Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · Jun 3

We have a new free article! 🥰

In this essay, Sonia García López and Marina Cavalcanti Tedesco explore the life and work of Rosina Prado, a Spanish-Soviet anti-fascist filmmaker who made documentaries at the ICAIC (Cuba) in the 1960s.

online.ucpress.edu/fmh/article/...

Crossing National Borders and Nontheatrical BoundariesThe Film Work of Rosina Prado

This article contributes to recovering the lost history of Rosina Prado’s work. Prado was a Spanish-Soviet filmmaker who, along with Sara Gómez, was one of the first women to direct films in Cuba, whe...

online.ucpress.edu

Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · May 16

We have a new CFP!

A special issue on the Long 1970s guest edited by Navaneetha Mokkil and Nitya Vasudevan!

Submission deadline is August 1, 2025.

Read the full CFP here: online.ucpress.edu/fmh/pages/cfp

Call for Papers | Feminist Media Histories | University of California Press

Call for Papers | Feminist Media Histories | University of California Press CALLS FOR PAPERS Special Issue on the Long 1970s Guest Editors: Navaneetha Mokkil & Nitya Vasudevan Pr...

online.ucpress.edu

Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · May 14

Free article alert!

In the piece, Jasmyn Castro explores the success African American WACs (Women’s Army Corps) experienced, and the challenging assumptions and beliefs that affected the trajectory of Black women in technical film trades.

online.ucpress.edu/fmh/article/...

A License to ProjectBlack Female Projectionists and “Men’s Work” in the US Women’s Army Corps

During World War II, African American WACs (Women’s Army Corps) served as “motion picture operators,” representing a significant yet overlooked history at the intersection of nontheatrical film studie...

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Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · Apr 29

The 11.2 issue of Feminist Media Histories is live! 🤩

This issue is devoted to "Nontheatrical Medias" and is guest edited by Tanya Goldman and Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa.

You can read their introduction below:
online.ucpress.edu/fmh/article/...

Editors’ Introduction

The December 1931 issue of International Review of Educational Technology—a monthly publication sponsored by the League of Nations’ International Educational Cinematographic Institute—begins with an e...

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Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · Apr 6

In our last free article in honor of Trans Day of Visibility, Cassius Adair looks at how certain print pornography was part of a distributed information and care network by and for US transfeminine people between the 1970s and 1990s.

online.ucpress.edu/fmh/article/...

Solidarity in the CenterfoldTrans Social Safety Networks in the Adult Magazine

This essay argues that certain print pornography featuring “crossdresser,” “transvestite,” and “transsexual” subjects was, counterintuitively, part of a distributed information and care network by and...

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Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · Apr 3

Today's piece is authored by Dan Bustillo and focuses on the work of trans Latinx micro-celebrities as they maintain visibility on social media platforms, despite the phobic constraints of platform corporate policies and social practices.

online.ucpress.edu/fmh/article/...

Transing the “Problem”Trans Latinx Micro-Celebrity Media Activism

On social media platforms, micro-celebrities need visibility to build community. Yet, the promise of online community is challenging for creators who contend with media platforms’ corporate policies o...

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Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · Apr 1

Continuing our week of free essays in honor of Transgender Day of Visibility, today's article is authored by Whit Pow who analyzes the glitch as a historically trans mode of media production.

Read the full essay here:

online.ucpress.edu/fmh/article/...

A Trans Historiography of Glitches and Errors

In 1978, queer and transgender programmer Jamie Faye Fenton created the first piece of experimental video glitch art, Digital TV Dinner, using the Bally Astrocade, a home computer and game console of ...

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Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · Mar 31

In our first piece, Chase Joynt and Jules Rosskam ask what might be possible in envisioning, theorizing, and enacting a trans cinematic method—a praxis for artists and scholars alike to be in meaningful, mutually supportive, world-sustaining relationships.

online.ucpress.edu/fmh/article/...

Toward a Trans Method, or Reciprocity as a Way of Life

It is reductive yet accurate to assert that Chase Joynt and Jules Rosskam first met because they are both trans people who make documentary films. While the alignment of these affinities does not nece...

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Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · Mar 31

Happy Transgender Day of Visibility! 🏳️‍⚧️💗

To celebrate, we have made several of our essays that focus on trans scholarship free to access throughout this week!

🧵

Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · Mar 24

Free article! 🤩

In this essay, Ryan Nhu looks at Suzanne, Suzanne (1982) and Finding Christa (1991) in relation to how they defamiliarize familial relationships and democratize care work in ways that resonate with the motives of family abolitionism.

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Break Yourself at HomeThe Queer Hospitality of Camille Billops and James V. Hatch

Since the heyday of Billops-Hatch film criticism in the 1990s, critics have noted the generic indeterminacy of the Family Trilogy. These accounts have illuminated the films’ complex fusion of autobiog...

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Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · Mar 14

Free article! 😄

In this essay, Michele Prettyman analyzes the film Older Women and Love (1987) as a case study and commentary on the complexity of women’s self-possession as they navigate sexual intimacy, aging, relationships to their bodies, and death.

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Woman, Alone? Camille Billops, Self-Possession, and Older Women and Love (1987)

This essay “Woman, Alone? Camille Billops, Self-Possession, and Older Women and Love (1987)” focuses on the unique dynamics in the personal and professional relationship between Camille Billops and Ja...

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Feminist Media Histories @femmediahist.bsky.social · Mar 6

Free article! 😄

Ruth Feldstein's essay looks at Camille Billops and perhaps her most famous film, Finding Christa (1991). This essay illuminates the different strategies that Black women filmmakers employed to produce a multifaceted Black feminism.

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Framing Finding ChristaBlack Feminisms and Films

This essay considers Camille Billops and perhaps her most famous film, Finding Christa (1991), in relation to other Black women filmmakers. Like Billops, Alile Sharon Larkin, one of the first Black wo...

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