Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Illustrations ix
4. Acknowledgments xiii
5. Introduction 1
6. Part 1. Early Film Combustion
7. 1. Early Cinema and the Comedy of Female Catastrophe 31
8. 2. Female Combustion and Feminist Film Historiography 54
9. Part 2. Transitional Film Metamorphosis
10. 3. Slapstick Comediennes in Transitional Cinema: Between Body and Medium 85
11. 4. The Geopolitics of Transitional Film Comedy: American Vitagraph Versus French Pathé-Frerès 111
12. 5. D. W. Griffith’s Slapstick Comediennes: Female Corporeality and Narrative Film Storytelling 143
13. Part 3. Feminist Slapstick Politics
14. 6. Film Comedy Aesthetics and Suffragette Social Politics 173
15. 7. Radical Militancy and Slapstick Political Violence 211
16. Postscript: Haunted Laughter at Late Comediennes 233
17. Annotated Filmography 239
18. Notes 277
19. Bibliography 307
20. Index 319