feminist writing

’90s “It Girls”: Britpop at the Postfeminist Intermezzo

lou

Consideration of female-fronted Britpop groups, negotiating postfeminist culture in the late 1990s, on the cusp of the sudden termination of the musical genre. The article tracks the ’90s “wild child” and “It Girl” type, from socialites to presenters of Channel 4’s The Word, and argues that the role eventually, and briefly, resided with Britpop “ladettes.” Open access article, at 13,000 words. My thanks to the University of Wolverhampton for funding for images.

Published in the Journal of Feminist Scholarship, issue 22 (Spring 2023): https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/jfs/

The article itself: 90s _It Girls_published version

“({})”: Raunch Culture, Third Wave Feminism and The Vagina Monologues

Reflections on The Vagina Monologues in respect to teaching, activism, and tensions between Second and Third Wave feminisms — SlutWalk protests, undergraduate encounter groups, sexting and girls gone wild, the legacy of 1970s consciousness-raising, Girl Power at the barricades, the shifts from feminist tract to feminist self-help manual. Includes my images from Manchester Slutwalk activism.

Thanks to Jodi Dean, then editor of the journal, who immediately asked for this piece when I first talked about my vague intentions to write it.

Article published in Theory & Event, 17.1, 2014. Johns Hopkins University Press. Link to journal

Download of PDF: Raunch_Culture_Third_Wave_Feminism_and

Intimate Live Girls

Chapter in The Arena Concert: Music, Media and Mass Entertainment. eds. Robert Edgar, Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs, Benjamin Halligan, Nicola Spelman. London and New York, Bloomsbury, 2015.

First academic writing on Miley Cyrus, in the context of exploring the challenges of achieving a sense of intimacy in the arena concert — Hannah Montana via Ziggy Stardust, the “kiss-cam” vs Section 28, Miley’s Messianic aspirations vs Peter Gabriel’s Anti-Apartheid anthems, twerking, MTV eugenics through Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, Terry Richardson’s stretched tongues, and the arena concert as social media transmitter. Includes my images of the Miley Cyrus Bangerz tour. The chapter is from my co-edited book The Arena Concert, which also includes an interview with one of the designers of the tour.

Download of PDF: IntimateLiveGirls

Link to The Arena Concert: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-arena-concert-9781628925579/

iaspmlineup

Discussion of The Arena Concert at IASPM: (l-r) Robert Kronenburg, Ben Halligan, Rob Edgar, Mark Duffett, Nicola Spelman, Jon Stewart, Kimi Kärki

Audio of me talking about arena concerts at the Brighton IASPM-UK conference: https://clyp.it/afzsxw2j

“My Uterus Doesn’t Expel Rape Sperm”: SlutWalk and the Activist Legacy of the Suffragettes

Chapter in Suffragette Legacy, eds. Camilla Mørk Røstvik and Ella Louise Sutherland. London: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2015.

Started life as a portfolio of my photographs for the book Suffragette Legacy but morphed into a consideration of Third Wave feminism and activism, the sudden appearance and disappearance of SlutWalk, Manchester Suffragette hauntology, establishing Temporary Autonomous Zones, empowerment as intervention in recollections of the event, the impact of slogans.

Link to Suffragette Legacy: http://www.cambridgescholars.com/suffragette-legacy

Download of PDF: My_uterus_doesn_t_expel_rape_sperm_Slut

Conference MediumSuff (left: event from which the book was drawn)