Feminism, Domesticity and Popular Culture

The relationship between feminism and domesticity has recently come in for renewed interest in popular culture. This collection makes an intervention into the debates surrounding feminism’s contentious relationship with domesticity and domestic femininities in popular culture. It offers an understanding of the place of domesticity in contemporary popular culture whilst considering how these domesticities might be understood from a feminist perspective. All the essays contribute to a more complex understanding of the relationships between feminism, femininity and domesticity, developing new ways of theorizing these relationships that have marked much of feminist history. Essay topics include Marguerite Patten, reality television shows like How Clean is Your House?, the figure of the maid in contemporary American cinema, aging or widowed domestic femininities, and the relationship between domesticity and motherhood.

Stacy Gillis is Lecturer in English at Newcastle University, UK. Her research interests are in feminist theory, detective fiction and cybertheory. The editor of The Matrix Trilogy: Cyberpunk Reloaded (2005) and co-editor of Third Wave Feminism (Rev. ed., 2007), her current work includes a book on the corpse in popular culture.

Joanne Hollows is Reader in Media and Cultural Studies at Nottingham Trent University, UK. She is the author of Feminism, Femininity and Popular Culture (2000) and Domestic Cultures (2008) and co-author of Food and Cultural Studies (2004). She has also co-edited a number of collections, including Feminism in Popular Culture (2006).