The unprecedented increase in lesbian representation over the past two decades has, paradoxically, coincided with queer theory's radical transformation of the study of sexuality. In Lesbian Cinema after Queer Theory, Clara Bradbury-Rance argues that this contradictory context has yielded new kinds of cinematic language through which to give desire visual form. By offering close readings of key contemporary films such as Blue Is the Warmest Colour, Water Lilies and Carol alongside a broader filmography encompassing over 300 other films released between 1927 and 2018, the book provokes new ways of understanding a changing field of representation. Bradbury-Rance resists charting a narrative of representational progress or shoring up the lesbian's categorisation in the newly available terms of the visible. Instead, she argues for a feminist framework that can understand lesbianism's queerness. Drawing on a provocative theoretical and visual corpus, Lesbian Cinema after Queer Theory reveals the conditions of lesbian legibility in the twenty-first century.

About the Author
Clara Bradbury-Rance is a Lecturer in the Department of Liberal Arts at King's College London.

Reviews
"Twenty-first century cinema has so far yielded an extraordinarily rich array of works-by directors male and female, queer and straight, arthouse and independent-that feature lesbian figures, desires, and dilemmas. Bradbury-Rance's book is the definitive study of these films. Showing how cinema stages key dramas of gender, sex, and visibility for the digital age, Bradbury-Rance convincingly restores the lesbian to debates in queer theory." Professor Patricia White, Swarthmore College



Book Information
ISBN 9781474435369
Author Clara Bradbury-Rance
Format Hardback
Page Count 240
Imprint Edinburgh University Press
Publisher Edinburgh University Press