Research
Suffering Sappho!
Lesbian Camp in American Popular Culture
Offering the first major consideration of lesbian camp in American popular culture, Suffering Sappho! examines a large-than-life lesbian menace in mid-century media embodied in five queer icons—the sicko, the monster, the spinster, the Amazon, and the rebel. Across comics, fiction, television, and movies of the era, Barbara Jane Brickman discovers evidence not just of campy sexual deviants but of troubling female performers, whose failures could be epicbut whose subversive potential could inspire.
Grease
Gender, Nostalgia and Youth Consumption in the Blockbuster Era
With an in-depth look at the history, social context, and industrial practices behind the teen musical phenomenon Grease, Barbara Jane Brickman’s book argues that social change, especially in terms of gender and sexuality, comes to the surface despite the film’s retro setting, blockbuster business model, and supposedly nostalgic tone. The vast audience for this film over the last forty years and the various “hopelessly devoted” fandoms indicate that Grease exceeds both the confines of its period and the limits of any one ideological message.
New American Teenagers
The Lost Generation of Youth in 1970s Film
While their parents’ era defined the American teenager with the romantic (cis)male figure of James Dean, the 1970s generation of youth saw reflected on screen a dramatically altered picture of fluid gender, queered sexuality, and a chilling disregard for the authority of patriarchal culture. In 1970s films like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Halloween, Freaky Friday, and Badlands, audiences finally got a reprieve from the ‘straight’ developmental narrative of previous generations. With New American Teenagers, Barbara Jane Brickman is the first to challenge the neglect of this decade in discussions of teen film by establishing the subversive potential and critical revision possible in the narratives of these new teenage voices.
Other Recent Publications
“‘When Cameron Was in Egypt’s Land’: The Queer Child of Neglect in John Hughes’ Films,”
pp. 102-117
Introduction: “Queering Girlhood”
Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 12.1 (March 2019): xi-xv
“Voyage to Camp Lesbos: Pulp Fiction and the Shameful
Lesbian ‘Sicko’,”
pp. 3-28.
To find more of my writing, visit my Academia.edu profile @BarbaraJaneBrickman.
Editorial Work
Love Across the Atlantic: US-UK Romance in Popular Culture
Winston Churchill famously described the political alliance between the US and UK as a ‘special relationship’, but throughout the cultural history of these two countries there have existed transatlantic ‘special relationships’ of another kind – affairs between British and American citizens who have fallen in love, with one another but often too with the idea(l) of that other place across the ocean. From romantic novelist Elinor Glyn in the 1920s to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle today, this collection examines some of the history, contemporary manifestations and enduring appeal of US-UK romance across popular culture.
