Research Seminar: ‘Slashing the Sisterhood? Women’s Authorship and the Postfeminist Politics of Early Teen Slasher’

This seminar unearths a history of women’s authorship in North American slasher film production, and examines the role women have played in the overarching politics and ideology of the slasher film

Histories of the North American slasher film have largely erased women’s (invisible) labour, despite the fact that over fifteen women worked as (co-)writers and/or producers across various independent and mainstream Hollywood productions between the years 1978 and 1984. How can we theorize women’s work without overestimating its feminism, while necessarily moving beyond reactionary tales of internalized misogyny and devout allegiance to heteropatriarchal order? Focusing specifically on the genre’s proliferation in the late 1970s and early 1980s, this seminar examines the important role that women’s authorship has played in the overarching politics and ideology of the slasher film, demonstrating how these films subvert heteropatriarchal narratives of violence against women while simultaneously reinforcing them.

Daniel Sheppard is Visiting Lecturer in Film and Screenwriting at Birmingham City University, where he recently earned his PhD in Media and Cultural Studies. He is Associate Editor of Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and Associate Director of Cine-Excess International Film Festival and Conference.