Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes

Named Best Silent Film Book of 2018 * Silent London *
An original and significant book, solidly grounded in comic theory. * Film Quarterly *
Hennefeld's work will delightfully haunt, but intelligently entertain. Highly recommended. * Choice *
Hennefeld’s book concludes with a call to “make visible the forgotten histories of feminist social struggle and of women’s cultural visibility”. Rather neatly, Specters of Slapstick offers an engrossing and energising example of that very work. -- Pamela Hutchinson * Sight & Sound *
Delivers on its ambitious commitment to ‘find a third way, an alternative to the impasses of the killjoy’s refusal and the unruly woman’s disruption.’ * Screen *
Hennefeld’s book represents a significant contribution to the field in its refreshing methodological combination of cultural analysis and feminist historiography. * NECSUS *
Invite[s] us to rethink our preconceptions about the place of women’s comic performances in film history, to imagine the effects of spectator laughter a century ago, and to examine the sources of our own delight in those performances. * Journal of Cinema and Media Studies *
The depth of Hennefeld’s analysis, the breadth of her research, the many cinematic examples she uses to illustrate her points, and the compelling nature of her arguments make the book a moving tribute to these women and an engaging and
informative read. * Women's Studies *
This book’s animated tone and savvy provocations [cause readers] to think about women’s silent-era comedy in new, dynamic, and surprising ways...In addition, Specters of Slapstick offers a significant new critical approach to women’s comedy for scholarship. * Journal of Cinema and Media Studies *
Maggie Hennefeld's comprehensive and in-depth study of female comedians in the silent film era...is an important intervention in the field of comedy studies as well as gender studies...a must read for students and scholars interested in gender, in film history, and in comedy. * Early Popular Visual Culture *
Hennefeld’s thoughtful reflections on theories of humor flesh out not only her discussions of slapstick but also the fraught relation between what makes us laugh and feminism. * Studies in American Humor *
Hennefeld’s thoughtful, comprehensive study, which does much to illuminate an overlooked archive of films, demonstrates clearly that these texts are themselves part of an 'undead past' that haunts the development of film throughout the 20th century and resonates with conventions of film comedy today. -- Rebecca Burditt * Film and History *
Simultaneously hilarious and seriously incisive, Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes is a dazzling demonstration of the way in which the female body in early film comedy is the privileged site for the display of the cinema’s defamiliarization of the world. Hennefeld skillfully links the centrality of women in comic films of mobility and catastrophe to anxieties surrounding their rapidly changing social position. This is a marvelous analysis. -- Mary Ann Doane, University of California, Berkeley
Hennefeld does a remarkable job of framing the politics of early film comedy in relation to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century philosophies of laughter. This is a far-reaching study that will change our understanding of the history of early film slapstick and gender. -- Robert J. King, Columbia University
Hennefeld draws on hundreds of films to reveal the radical interest and specificity of the silent film comediennes who humorously ruptured themselves while negotiating the shifting place of women’s bodies in cinema’s early years. Forging a rigorous third way between “killjoy refusal” and “unruly disruption” using a “Laughing Methodology” to counter misogynist violence, this brilliant book illuminates the vital link between feminist laughter and the slow-burn pleasure of feminist thought. -- Karen Redrobe, University of Pennsylvania
Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes has been quite a revelation to me. -- Scott Adlerberg
Will set new agendas in our understanding of comic theory, early film history, feminist performances, and the sources of laughter. -- Tom Gunning * Cultural Critique *