While women have long been featured in leading roles in film and television, the intellectual depictions of female characters in these mediums are out of line with reality. Women continue to be marginalized for their choices, overshadowed by men, and judged by their bodies. In fact, the intelligence of women is rarely the focus of television or film narratives, and on the rare occasion when smart women are showcased, their portrayals are undermined by socially awkward behavior or their intimate relationships are doomed to perpetual failure. While Hollywood claims to offer a different, more evolved look at women, these movies and shows often just repackage old character types that still downplay the intelligence and savvy of women.InSmart Chicks on Screen: Representing Womens Intellect in Film and Television, Laura Mattoon DAmore brings together an impressive array of scholarship that interrogates the portrayal of females on television and in movies. Among the questions that the volume seeks to answer are: In what ways are women in film and television limited, or ostracized, by their intelligence? How do female roles reinforce standards of beauty, submissiveness, and silence over intellect, problem solving, and leadership? Are there women in film and television who are intelligent without also being objectified?The thirteen essays by international, interdisciplinary scholars offer a wide range of perspectives, examining the connectionsand disconnectionsbetween beauty and brains in film and television.Smart Chicks on Screen will be of interest to scholars not only of film and television but of womens studies, reception studies, and cultural history, as well.

Laura Mattoon DAmore is assistant professor of American studies at Roger Williams University. She is the editor ofBound by Love: Familial Bonding in Film and Television Since 1950 (2009) and co-editor ofWe Are What We Remember: The American Past through Commemoration(2012).

IntroductionLaura Mattoon DAmoreChapter One: Not Just Born Yesterday: July Holliday, the Red Scare, and the (Mis-)Uses of Hollywoods Dumb Blonde ImageStephen R. DuncanChapter Two: The Fuzzy End of the Lollipop: Protofeminism and Collective Subjectivity inSome Like it HotMelissa MeadeChapter Three: Brainy Broads: Images of Womens Intellect in Film NoirSheri Chinen BiesenChapter Four: Troubling Binaries: Women Scientists in 1950s B-MoviesLinda LevittChapter Five: The High Priestess of the Desert: Female Intellect and Subjectivity inContactAllison WhitneyChapter Six:Mad Mens Peggy Olsen: A Pre-Feminist Champion in a Post-Feminist TV LandscapeStefania MarghituChapter Seven: A Deeper Cut: Enlightened Sexism andGrey's AnatomyMikaela FeroliChapter Eight: There is no genius: Dr. Joan Watson and the Re-writing of Gender and Intelligence on CBSElementaryHelen Kang and Natasha PattersonChapter Nine: Stories Worth Telling: How Kerry Washington Balances Brains, Beauty, and Power in HollywoodDe Anna J. ReeseChapter Ten: Post-Feminism, Sexuality and the Question of Millenial Identity on HBOsGirlsMargaret J. TallyChapter Eleven: I Cant Believe I Fell for Muppet Man! Female Nerds and the Order of DiscourseRaewyn CampbellChapter Twelve: Brains, Beauty, and Feminist Television: The Women ofThe Big Bang TheoryAmanda StoneChapter Thirteen: Too Smart for Their Own Good? Images of Young Jewish Women in Television and FilmRachel Shaina BernsteinAbout the EditorAbout the ContributorsIndex