They have it good, or do they? Women's agency in contemporary visual and material cultures

They have it good, or do they? Agency is women's capacity to have it both ways: turning themselves (their work, body, persona, discourse or whatever they consider to be part of their subjectivity) into channels of communication and instruments of Change, as well as being the actors and performers of the transformations at work. Spanning almost fifty years of Anglophone visual and material cultures from an intersectional, ince.rnxeWai and interdisciplinary perspective, the present book considers women's agency, its visibility and relevance in contemporary society.. From the Baxploitation movies to the self-made personas of pop feminism, it explores how women's influence in, a variety of areas such as politics, cinema, theatre, literature, comic books, and digital streaming media, has morphed Into novel practices, and to whas extent pieviously existing strategies have been recycled and re(de)fined to further fulfill women's needs and adapt to current social issues. The female grasp on contemporary visual and material cultures has been opening new, albeit slippery grounds, which invites us to rethink such well-established notions as those of authenticity and deceit or artifice. This fragile equilibrium is also what fuels women's creative potential and their ability to react to the ever-shifting power relations.