Smart Chicks on Screen

Laura Mattoon D’Amore is assistant professor of American studies at Roger Williams University. She is the editor of Bound by Love: Familial Bonding in Film and Television Since 1950 (2009) and co-editor of We Are What We Remember: The American Past through Commemoration (2012).

• Introduction, Laura Mattoon D’AmoreChapter One: Not Just Born Yesterday: July Holliday, the Red Scare, and the (Mis-)Uses of Hollywood’s “Dumb Blonde” ImageStephen R. DuncanChapter Two: The Fuzzy End of the Lollipop: Protofeminism and Collective Subjectivity in Some Like it HotMelissa MeadeChapter Three: Brainy Broads: Images of Women’s Intellect in Film NoirSheri Chinen BiesenChapter Four: Troubling Binaries: Women Scientists in 1950s B-MoviesLinda LevittChapter Five: “The High Priestess of the Desert”: Female Intellect and Subjectivity in ContactAllison WhitneyChapter Six: Mad Men’s Peggy Olsen: A Pre-Feminist Champion in a Post-Feminist TV LandscapeStefania MarghituChapter Seven: A Deeper Cut: Enlightened Sexism and Grey's AnatomyMikaela FeroliChapter Eight: “There is no genius”: Dr. Joan Watson and the Re-writing of Gender and Intelligence on CBS’ ElementaryHelen Kang and Natasha PattersonChapter Nine: …Stories Worth Telling: How Kerry Washington Balances Brains, Beauty, and Power in HollywoodDe Anna J. ReeseChapter Ten: Post-Feminism, Sexuality and the Question of Millenial Identity on HBO’s GirlsMargaret J. TallyChapter Eleven: I Can’t Believe I Fell for Muppet Man! Female Nerds and the Order of DiscourseRaewyn CampbellChapter Twelve: Brains, Beauty, and Feminist Television: The Women of The Big Bang TheoryAmanda StoneChapter Thirteen: Too Smart for Their Own Good? Images of Young Jewish Women in Television and FilmRachel Shaina BernsteinAbout the EditorAbout the ContributorsIndex

D'Amore has put together a smart book on an important subject: the ways in which women of depth and intelligence are presented on the screen, or in short, the ways in which all women should be presented on the screen—i.e., with respect and understanding. Hollywood’s insulting list of shorthand tropes for supposed stupidity, a list 'dumb blonde' surely tops, gets a thorough going over in this collection of detailed, sharply observed essays by such scholars as Sheri Chinen Biesen (on women in film noir), Stefania Marghitu (on the character of Peggy Olson in the television series Mad Men), Stephen Duncan (on Judy Holliday’s participation in the film Born Yesterday), and Amanda Stone (on the female characters in the television sitcom Big Bang Theory), to name just a few of the 13 superb essays collected in this volume. D’Amore has done an excellent job with this volume, which bids fair to become a required resource for any course on women in film and television. In essays that are both insightful and delightful, the various contributors offer an entirely new approach to women as they are portrayed on the big and small screen. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.