Foster publishes 'Disruptive Feminisms'

Gwendolyn Audrey Foster has just published her new book, Disruptive Feminisms: Raced, Gendered, and Classed Bodies in Film with Palgrave Macmillan.

"In the book, I seek to shed light on the ways that feminism lurks in unexpected places," Foster writes. "I have always been interested in exploring less obvious feminist disruptions found in a variety of classical, postmodern, and postcolonial international films." Foster's scope is wide, including films from classical Hollywood, early television, and the work of international postcolonial filmmakers, to show how "disruptive feminism" lurks in unlikely and unexpected places - from the subversive work of Amy Schumer, Betty White, Dorothy Arzner, Ida Lupino, Luis Buñuel, and Paul Thomas Anderson - to the postcolonial films of Carlos Reygadas and Claire Denis. What pulls these artists together is their ability to disrupt and challenge everything from class and racism to sexism and ageism. "Indeed, I hope the book disrupts feminism itself," writes Foster. "It can always use some shaking up."

Feminism is defined in so many ways that it clearly has long grown well beyond the scope of gender. As a global cultural feminist, Foster seeks to highlight the ways that films and texts disrupt, challenge, and overturn the norms of race, gender, age, sexuality, and class.

Critic Ira Jaffe writes, 'This book passionately advocates a cinema that challenges injustice and oppression across the globe by disrupting 'normative values' and 'received notions' of race and class as well as gender."

More information can be found on her website, gwendolynaudreyfoster.com.