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Disappearing women as a persistent trope from nineteenth-century magic through contemporary theory, film, and psychoanalysis

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations viii
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 3
1. Surplus Bodies, Vanishing Women: Conjuring, Imperialism, and the Rhetoric of Disappearance, 1851–1901 17
2. Insubstantial Media: Ectoplasm, Exposure, and the Stillbirth of Film 61
3. Mother Knows Best: Magic and Matricide 93
4. Violent Vanishings: Hitchcock, Harlan, and the Politics of Prestidigitation 129
5. Shooting Stars, Vanishing Comets: Bette Davis and Cinematic Fading 153
Afterword 189
Notes 195
Works Cited 219
Filmography 233
Index 235

About the Author

Karen Beckman is Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Professor of Film Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Reviews

“Karen Beckman has written an eye-opening book, one that travels across a richly diverse group of texts in order to reveal the vanishing woman’s historical underpinnings and cultural work.”—Sabrina Barton

“This highly original and beautifully crafted study explores feminist film theory, psychoanalysis, and cinema through a cultural history of the vanishing woman figure—from nineteenth-century prestidigitation and mediumship to early cinema and across the twentieth century. In positing the vanishing woman as a significant corrective to feminist film theory's staple readings of woman as ‘absence or lack,’ or hypervisible spectacle, this book offers a fascinating and provocative treatment of enduring discussions that have shaped this field.”—Sharon Willis