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 = $8.1 ...

. 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, Canada si ...

, 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 Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...

films: '' Blackmail'', '' Murder'', '' Rebecca'', '' Notorious'', ''

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 st ...

'', ''

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 w ...

'' and ''

Frenzy ''Frenzy'' is a 1972 British thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It is the penultimate feature film of his extensive career. The screenplay by Anthony Shaffer was based on the 1966 novel ''Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Squa ...

''. 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 The academics of the University of Southern California center on The College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, the Graduate School, and its 17 professional schools. Overview USC is a member of the Association of American Universities, joining in 196 ...

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