Final Girls, Feminism and Popular Culture (eBook)

This volume examines contemporary reformulations of the 'Final Girl' in film, TV, literature and comic, expanding the discussion of the trope beyond the slasher subgenre. Focusing specifically on popular texts that emerged in the 21st century, the volume asks: What is the sociocultural context that facilitated the remarkable proliferation of the Final Girls? What kinds of stories are told in these narratives and can they help us make sense of feminism? What are the roles of literature and media in the reconsiderations of Carol J. Clover's term of thirty years ago and how does this term continue to inform our understanding of popular culture? The contributors to this collection take up these concerns from diverse perspectives and with different answers, notably spanning theories of genre, posthumanism, gender, sexuality and race, as well as audience reception and spectatorship.

Katarzyna Paszkiewicz is Lecturer in English Studies at the University of the Balearic Islands, Spain, and member of ADHUC-Research Center for Theory, Gender and Sexuality (University of Barcelona). She has co-edited, with Mary Harrod, Women Do Genre in Film and Television (2017, Winner of first Prize in the BAFTSS Best Edited Collection competition) and published her monograph Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers (2018).

Stacy Rusnak is Associate Professor of Film at Georgia Gwinnett College, Georgia.  Her publications include chapters on MTV and the 1980s satanic panic, cannibalism and consumption in Jorge Michel Grau's Somos lo que hay and third wave feminism in Twin Peaks.  She has also served as guest judge for Atlanta's Buried Alive Film Festival.