Although the coming of age story has been a popular film plot for decades, producers have only recently realized the commercial potential of targeting films to adolescent girls. Movies like Clueless, Legally Blonde and Mean Girls have been successfully marketed to teenage girls, as have several well-known independent films. Important as both cultural indicators and catalysts, these films simultaneously demonstrate pop culture s influence on girls films, and the ability of girls films to affect pop culture and perceptions of girlhood. This critical survey of film and the...

Women and Fitness in American Culture explores and explodes common representations and experiences of American fitness. This book takes women's experiences as the centre of inquiry toward an understanding of the function of fitness in our lives and in our culture-at-large. Ranging from 1968 to present day, from Jane Fonda to WiiFit, from revolution to institutionalisation, from personal to political, and beyond, this book considers a broad range of topics from an interdisciplinary perspective including; generations, cultural appropriation, community development, art choreography,...

Simple and complicated, interdisciplinarity can be intimidating. But it is everywhere-in academia and in the world-and it is shaping our present and future in important ways. This book aims to introduce all students or prospective students (or life-long learners) to the basic definitions of interdisciplinarity as well as some of the bigger ideas that bring meaning and purpose to the study and practice of interdisciplinarity-in academia and beyond. Practical and Idealistic, instructional and inspirational, Universal Interdisciplinarity provides a starting point-or an intervention-for a diverse...