Artificial Women

“As candidates for public office tout their masculinity (often surgically or medically assisted), while opposing gender-affirming care for trans people, Victoria Hesford theorizes feminist futures by tracing media technologies’ roles in shaping or constituting ‘artificial women.’ In this un-put-downable-book, visual culture is a partner in thinking, not just an object for theory to analyze, and feminism is an agonistic politics. A brilliant synthetic account of 20th century feminism, media, and theory.” - Bonnie Honig, author of A Feminist Theory of Refusal

“In Artificial Women, Victoria Hesford explores how the unmooring of the category of ‘woman,’ definitive of 1970s feminisms, was, surprisingly, best exemplified by the mass cultures of the era. Films and TV series both participated in and tried to contain the threat of woman’s unmooring. A continuation of Hesford’s significant advancement of the historiography of the 1970s, Artificial Women is also a welcome addition to feminist, queer, and trans media studies.” - Jed Samer, author of Lesbian Potentiality