Books by Catherine Driscoll

A new history of the genre that surveys the existing body of scholarship and introduces key critical tools for discussing teen film. An introduction to all aspects of this genre of film: movies about adolescents and adolescence.

In Australia, 'country girl' names a field of experiences and life-stories by girls and women who have grown up outside of the demographically dominant urban centres. It also names a set of ideas about Australia that is surprisingly consistent across the long twentieth century despite also working as an index of changing times.

The Spice Girls, Tank Girl comicbooks, Sailor Moon, Courtney Love, Grrl Power: do such things really constitute a unique "e;girl culture?"e; Catherine Driscoll begins by identifying a genealogy of "e;girlhood"e; or "e;feminine adolescence,"e; and then argues that both "e;girls"e; and "e;culture"e; as ideas are too problematic to fulfill any useful role in theorizing about the emergence of feminine adolescence in popular culture. She relates the increasing public visibility of girls in western and westernized cultures to the evolution and expansion of theories about feminine adolescence in fields such as psychoanalysis, sociology, anthropology, history, and politics. Presenting her argument as a Foucauldian genealogy, Driscoll discusses the ways in which young women have been involved in the production and consumption of theories and representations of girls, feminine adolescence, and the "e;girl market."e;