Abstract
A primary preoccupation that marks contemporary culture is the question of gender: who are we, and to what extent do biological divisions of male and female continue to inform our sense of identity? The questions routinely raised by feminist scholars within the academy during the last 20 years of the twentieth century have become the stuff of popular narrative in the twenty-first century — with contemporary movies continuing to provide a collective locus for the expression of cultural concerns within the largely comforting and reassuring framework of established genres in hybridized form. This volume does not attempt to offer a comprehensive survey of gender and film; rather, its mandate is to air issues surrounding the cinematic representation of gender that continue to be the object of both popular and scholarly attention.