Reading Lena Dunham's Girls

In this book, leading and emerging scholars consider the mixed critical responses to Lena Dunham¿s TV series Girls and reflect on its significance to contemporary debates about postfeminist popular cultures in a post-recession context. The series features both familiar and innovative depictions of young women and men in contemporary America that invite comparisons with Sex and the City. It aims for a refreshed, authentic expression of postfeminist femininity that eschews the glamour and aspirational fantasies spawned by its predecessor. This volume reviews the contemporary scholarship on Girls, from its representation of post-millennial gender politics to depictions of the messiness and imperfections of sex, embodiment, and social interactions. Topics covered include Dunham¿s privileged role as author/auteur/actor, sexuality, body consciousness, millennial gender identities, the politics of representation, neoliberalism, and post-recession society. This book provides diverse and provocative critical responses to the show and to wider social and media contexts, and contributes to a new generation of feminist scholarship with a powerful concluding reflection from Rosalind Gill. It will appeal to those interested in feminist theory, identity politics, popular culture, and media.

Meredith Nash is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Tasmania, Australia. She is the author of Making Postmodern Mothers (2012) and editor of Reframing Reproduction (2014). Imelda Whelehan is Dean of Higher Degree Research at the Australian National University. Her books include Overloaded (2000), Helen Fielding¿s Bridget Jones¿s Diary (2002), The Feminist Bestseller (2005), and she is co-author of Key Concepts in Gender Studies with Jane Pilcher (2017).

1) Why Girls? Why now? MEREDITH NASH AND IMELDA WHELEHAN.- 2. Part I: Postfeminism(s) 2) I have work I am busy trying to become who I am: Neoliberal Girls and recessionary postfeminism STEPHANIE GENZ.- 3) Hating Hannah: Or learning to love postfeminist entitlement IMELDA WHELEHAN.- 4) Genres of impasse: Postfeminism as a relation of cruel optimism in Girls CAT MCDERMOTT.- 5) Twenty-something Girls v. thirty-something Sex and the City women: Paving the way for post? feminism RUBY GRANT AND MEREDITH NASH.- 6) Bad sex and the city? Feminist (re)awakenings in HBOs Girls MELANIE WATERS.- 7. Part II: Performing and representing millennial identities 7) A voice of a generation: Girls and the problem of representation HANNAH KY MCCANN.- 8) Educating girls: Girls and twenty-first century education for women LAURA WITHERINGTON.- 9) Reading the boys of Girls FREDERIK DHAENENS.- 10) All adventurous women sing: Articulating the feminine through the music of GirlsALEXANDER SERGEANT.- 11) Doing her best with what shes got: Authorship, irony and mediating feminist identities in GirlsWALLIS SEATON.- Part III: Sex, sexuality, and bodies 12) Art porn provocauteurs: Feminist performances of embodiment in the work of Catherine Breillat and Lena Dunham MARIA SAN FILIPPO.- 13) You shouldnt be doing that because you havent got the body for it: Comment on nudity in Girls DEBORAH THOMAS.- 14) Sexual perversity in New York? CHRISTOPHER LLOYD.- 15) All postfeminist women do: Womens sexual and reproductive health in Girls ELIZABETH ARVEDA KISSLING.- 16) Afterword: Girls: Notes on authenticity, ambivalence and imperfection ROSALIND GILL.