Tania Modleski (born 1949) is an American feminist scholar and cultural critic, Professor of English at the

University of Southern California , mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it" , religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist , established = , accreditation = WSCUC , type = Private research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $8. ...

. Modleski's ''Loving with a Vengeance'', "to begin a feminist analysis of women's reading", considered three popular fictional genres: the

Harlequin romance Harlequin Enterprises ULC (known simply as Harlequin) is a romance and women's fiction publisher founded in Winnipeg, Canada in 1949. From the 1960s, it grew into the largest publisher of romance fiction in the world. Based in Toronto, Canad ...

, the Gothic novel and the daytime US

soap opera A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...

. Modleski argued that the formulaic nature of these genres gave readers the freedom to construct their own response, at a distance from the text. Her next book, ''The Women Who Knew Too Much'', examined seven Hitchcock films: ''

Blackmail Blackmail is an act of coercion using the threat of revealing or publicizing either substantially true or false information about a person or people unless certain demands are met. It is often damaging information, and it may be revealed to f ...

'', '' Murder'', ''

Rebecca Rebecca, ; Syriac: , ) from the Hebrew (lit., 'connection'), from Semitic root , 'to tie, couple or join', 'to secure', or 'to snare') () appears in the Hebrew Bible as the wife of Isaac and the mother of Jacob and Esau. According to biblical ...

'', ''

Notorious Notorious means well known for a negative trait, characteristic, or action. It may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Notorious'' (1946 film), a thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock * ''Notorious'' (1992 film), a TV film re ...

'', ''

Rear Window ''Rear Window'' is a 1954 American mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and written by John Michael Hayes based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder". Originally released by Paramount Pictures, the film ...

'', ''

Vertigo Vertigo is a condition where a person has the sensation of movement or of surrounding objects moving when they are not. Often it feels like a spinning or swaying movement. This may be associated with nausea, vomiting, sweating, or difficulties ...

'' and '' Frenzy''. Modelski now challenged the terms of taking 'distance' from a text, arguing that "the desire for distance itself s... bound up with the male's insistence on his difference from woman." By contrast to male violence, the 'feminine' could embrace "narrative empathy, spectatorial passivity, and the subconscious imaginary". In ''Feminism Without Women'', Modleski argued that "male power frequently works to efface female subjectivity by occupying the site of femininity", and that the writer has a responsibility to re-articulate women's shared experience.

Works

* ''Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women''. London: Methuen, 1982 * ''The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and feminist theory''. New York: Methuen, 1983 * (ed.) ''Studies in entertainment: critical approaches to mass culture''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. * ''Feminism Without Women: Culture and Criticism in a "Postfeminist" Age''. New York: Routledge, 1991. * ''Old wives' tales, and other women's stories''. New York: New York University Press, 1998.

References

External links

Tania Modleski
at USC Dornsife
2010 interview
at The Lazy Scholar {{DEFAULTSORT:Modleski, Tania 1949 births Living people American feminist writers American film critics American women film critics University of Southern California faculty American women writers