Movie Mavens

Richard Abel is a professor emeritus of international cinema and media studies at the University of Michigan. His recent books include Menus for Movie Land: Newspapers and the Emergence of American Film Culture, 1913-1916, and Motor City Movie Culture, 1916-1925. He is also the coeditor of Barbara C. Hodgdon’s writings, Ghostly Fragmentsand the 2017 winner of the Jean Mitry Award.

"Juxtaposing biographical information found through archival research with samples of film criticism transcribed from local papers, Abel throws a much-needed light on the female columnists who originally mediated the pictures for a mass audience increasingly defined by young women and girls." --Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film "With a scholar's knack for detail, Abel provides context for this crucial period of cinema history. An illuminating combination of scholarship and nostalgia." --Library Journal "A revelation! From snarky hard-talking dames to tartly respectable scholars, Movie Mavens recovers the diverse and compelling voices of the legions of newspaperwomen who wrote about movies during the tumultuous 1910s and early 1920s. An invaluable resource from a model film historian."--Laura Horak, author of Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908-1934