Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls examines the bizarre and fascinating range of gender portrayals in film at the end of the twentieth century. In order to view the screened face of gender in bold new ways, the contributors cover a wide variety of cinematic forms and styles--from the boy-girls of Hong Kong cinema to the on-screen modesty of post-revolutionary Iran to the New Hollywood's treatment of homosexuality, female power, and male intellectuality. Throughout, the works of important filmmakers are analyzed, including Ridley Scott, David Cronenberg, Jim Jarmusch, Woody Allen, Rakhshan...

Dancing on the White Page examines the popular autobiographies of six well-known Black women entertainers--Diahann Carroll, Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, Whoopi Goldberg, and Mary Wilson--and makes a case for adding Black celebrity autobiography to the African American literary canon. As she explores these women's fascinating stories, Kwakiutl L. Dreher reveals how each one improvises the choreography of her life to survive and thrive in the film, television, and music industries, as well as the politically charged environment of the Black community, most specifically...