Motherhood Misconceived

Heather Addison is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Western Michigan University and author of Hollywood and the Rise of Physical Culture. Mary Kate Goodwin-Kelly is an independent scholar living in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Elaine Roth is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Indiana University South Bend.

"This collection has an engaging, lively introduction co-authored by the three editors that manages to address both film studies specialists and non-specialists in its analysis of why representations of the maternal in U.S. films should concern us and precisely what the collection tells us about those representations." — Femspec"This intriguing book collects sharp essays, by key scholars in film studies, questioning the 'maternal' image in American cinema from the early 1900s to the present … Illustrated with more than 20 well-chosen images, this book belongs in every serious collection of feminist film criticism." — CHOICE"This collection focuses on Hollywood's portrayal of motherhood in a clear, coherent fashion and addresses a variety of subtopics, including the mother-to-be, the single mother, the aging mother, the transsexual mother, and the mother in various genres." — Lucy Fischer, author of Designing Women: Cinema, Art Deco, and the Female Form

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction Heather Addison, Mary Kate Goodwin-Kelly, and Elaine RothI. The Celluloid Stork: Picturing Pregnancy1. Pregnant Body and/as Smoking Gun: Reviewing the Evidence of FargoMary Kate Goodwin-Kelly2. Mother’s Day: Taking the Mother Out of Motherhood in The Thrill of It AllTamar Jeffers McDonald3. Not Exactly According to the Rules: Pregnancy and Motherhood in Sugar & SpiceMadonne M. MinerII. Constructions of Motherhood: Mothers, Daughters, and Sex 4. Modernizing Mother: The Maternal Figure in Early HollywoodHeather Addison5. "Whose Baby Are You?": Mother/Daughter Discourse in the Star Images of Mary Pickford and Joan CrawfordGaylyn Studlar6. "You Just Hate Men!": Maternal Sexuality and the Nuclear Family in Gas, Food, LodgingElaine RothIII. Horriffic Mothers and the Mothers of Horror 7. Hollywood’s "Moms" and Postwar AmericaMike Chopra-Gant8. Alfred Hitchcock and the Phobic Maternal BodyMun-Hou Lo 9. Paranoia, Cold Surveillance, and the Maternal Gaze: Reconsidering the "Absent Mother" in Ordinary PeopleMark Harper10. Scream, Popular Culture, and Feminism’s Third Wave: "I’m Not My Mother"Kathleen Rowe KarlynIV. Maternal Anxieties of Class, Race, and Gender11. Great Ladies and Guttersnipes: Class and the Representation of Southern Mothers in Hollywood FilmsAimee Berger12. "Don’t Say Mammy": Camille Billops’s Meditations on Black MotherhoodJanet K. Cutler13. From Dad to Mom: Transgendered Motherhood in TransamericaMary M. DaltonList of ContributorsIndex