This edited anthology critically engages with the intersection of feminism, politics, and popular culture, with an emphasis on how shifts in cultural discourse have shaped the perception, understanding, and practice of feminist thought in contemporary society. Drawing on Foucault, this volume provides a critical framework for understanding how feminist movementsparticularly second-wave feminismwere commodified and subsumed into capitalist logics. It demonstrates how feminist aims like gender equity and bodily autonomy are rendered into categories that can be surveilled, managed, and ultimately co-opted once they are made legible to power and argues that this transformation diminishes the efficacy of feminist action, as its revolutionary potential becomes subsumed into the very structures it seeks to resist. The future of feminism is thus framed as a question of how to contend with its past: How do we reconcile the radical aims of the second wave with the neoliberalization of contemporary feminism? Each chapter bridges scholarly theory with contemporary analysis, making use of academic sources as well as cultural texts like media. This volume will be of interest to students and scholars in feminist theory, gender studies, literary criticism, critical theory, and pop culture studies.
1. Introduction: Feminisms, Genealogy, and the Current Moment.- Part I
The Politics of Feminism.- 2. Honey, Whose Home: The Racial-Gender
Implications of #Tradwives.- 3. Reclaiming Feminism Through
Consciousness-Raising Education.- 4. The Takeover of Imperialist Feminism:
Returning to the Second Wave, Clinton, Harris, and Falling Short of True
Intersectionality.- 5. When Fandom, Politics, and Feminisms Intersect: A
Tumblr Autoethnography of Fourth Wave as Multifaceted, Emotional
Pedagogy.- 6. No One Likes a Mad Woman: Taylor Swift and the Politics of
Gendered Subordination in the 21st Century.- Part II The Feminisms of
Politics, Feminisms of Pop Culture.-
7. Digital Distortions: How Social Media
Algorithms Reshape Feminist Discourse.- 8. Jill Biden and Kamala Harris in
Vogue: A Comparative Study of Political Representations of Women in the 17th
and 21st Centuries.- 9. Femininomenonic Discourse: Lesbophobia and Social
Media Crossroads.- 10. Sexist Implications of the TikTok Trend Girl
Math.- 11. Ecological Joy and Fabulous, Sustainable Fashion Activists:
Expressions of Desiring Selves Struggling for Climate Justice and
Beauty.- 12. Naming The Donfather and Name-Calling The Ho: Sacred and
Profane Misogynoir in Election 2024.- 13. Heteropessimism and the Denial of
the Lesbian Erotics.- 14. Alt-Rock Feminist Icons: Advancing Feminism from
the 1990s and Beyond.- 15. Bitch, Please: Neoliberal Feminist Responses to
Sabrina Carpenters Mans Best Friend.- Part III Feminist Futures.- 16. What
we Need is a Femininomenon: How the Sapphic Themes of Popular Music are
Shaping Feminisms Future.- 17. Death Reclaimed as a Radically Feminist
Escape.- 18. The Cunt-loving Mystique: Embracing and Representing Womens
Sex-empowerment in Millennial Online Poetry and Visual Arts.- 19.
Transfeminist Film and the Immediacy of History.- 20. Dissociative Feminism
and the Cultural Politics of Passivity.
Christine M. Battista is the co-editor of Critical Theory and the Humanities in the Age of the Alt-Right (Palgrave, 2019) and co-author of Literary Feminist Ecologies of American and Caribbean Expansionism: Errand into the Wilderness (Routledge, 2023). She has published numerous articles and book chapters in the fields of environmental humanities, literary theory, postcolonial studies, and American literature. She is an instructor of English at the University of Colorado Denver, USA.
Melissa R. Sande is the co-editor of Critical Theory and the Humanities in the Age of the Alt Right (Palgrave, 2019) and co-author of Literary Feminist Ecologies of American and Caribbean Expansionism: Errand into the Wilderness (Routledge, 2023). She has published numerous articles and book chapters, in venues such Studies in American Fiction. She is associate vice president for Academic Affairs and dean of Humanities at UCNJ Union College of Union County, New Jersey, USA.
