Deborah Jermyn is a Reader in Film and Television at Roehampton University, UK. She is the author and editor of numerous books exploring women, feminism and popular culture including Female Celebrity and Ageing: Back in the Spotlight (2013), Sex and the City (2009) and Hollywood Transgressor: The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow (2003).

Jermyn's book is much more than a carefully researched, well written and brilliantly argued study of Nancy Meyers. In providing her analysis with a multiplicity of well-chosen contexts --postfeminist culture, the politics of the popular, the hidden complexities of romantic comedy-- she ends up contributing as much to those contexts as to the work of the Hollywood director. Both passionate and nuanced, this is film scholarship at its very best.

• List of illustrationsAcknowledgementsPrefaceIntroduction: Women, Hollywood and the Politics of the Popular1. KEY COLLABORATIVE RELATIONSHIPSMeet The Shmeyers: Meyers as writer-producer and the ‘writing couple’ leitmotif2. WAYS OF WATCHINGThe Romcom Queen: Gender, genre and cultural value3. RETHINKING AUTHORSHIPThe wrong kind of woman filmmaker?: Meyers, feminism, and the quandaries of the female auteur4. KEY CONCEPTS‘Your age is my favourite thing about you’: Meyers’ older women and the gendered experience of ageingConclusionBibliography Index

Deborah Jermyn is a Reader in Film and Television at Roehampton University, UK. She is the author and editor of numerous books exploring women, feminism and popular culture including Female Celebrity and Ageing: Back in the Spotlight (2013), Sex and the City (2009) and Hollywood Transgressor: The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow (2003).

Jermyn's book is much more than a carefully researched, well written and brilliantly argued study of Nancy Meyers. In providing her analysis with a multiplicity of well-chosen contexts --postfeminist culture, the politics of the popular, the hidden complexities of romantic comedy-- she ends up contributing as much to those contexts as to the work of the Hollywood director. Both passionate and nuanced, this is film scholarship at its very best.

• List of illustrationsAcknowledgementsPrefaceIntroduction: Women, Hollywood and the Politics of the Popular1. KEY COLLABORATIVE RELATIONSHIPSMeet The Shmeyers: Meyers as writer-producer and the ‘writing couple’ leitmotif2. WAYS OF WATCHINGThe Romcom Queen: Gender, genre and cultural value3. RETHINKING AUTHORSHIPThe wrong kind of woman filmmaker?: Meyers, feminism, and the quandaries of the female auteur4. KEY CONCEPTS‘Your age is my favourite thing about you’: Meyers’ older women and the gendered experience of ageingConclusionBibliography Index

Deborah Jermyn is a Reader in Film and Television at Roehampton University, UK. She is the author and editor of numerous books exploring women, feminism and popular culture including Female Celebrity and Ageing: Back in the Spotlight (2013), Sex and the City (2009) and Hollywood Transgressor: The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow (2003).

Jermyn's book is much more than a carefully researched, well written and brilliantly argued study of Nancy Meyers. In providing her analysis with a multiplicity of well-chosen contexts --postfeminist culture, the politics of the popular, the hidden complexities of romantic comedy-- she ends up contributing as much to those contexts as to the work of the Hollywood director. Both passionate and nuanced, this is film scholarship at its very best.

• List of illustrationsAcknowledgementsPrefaceIntroduction: Women, Hollywood and the Politics of the Popular1. KEY COLLABORATIVE RELATIONSHIPSMeet The Shmeyers: Meyers as writer-producer and the ‘writing couple’ leitmotif2. WAYS OF WATCHINGThe Romcom Queen: Gender, genre and cultural value3. RETHINKING AUTHORSHIPThe wrong kind of woman filmmaker?: Meyers, feminism, and the quandaries of the female auteur4. KEY CONCEPTS‘Your age is my favourite thing about you’: Meyers’ older women and the gendered experience of ageingConclusionBibliography Index