Chick Lit Academic Bibliography

A-C

Arosteguy, Katie O'Donnell. 2009. 

"The Clothes Do Make the Women: The Politics of Fashioning Femininity in Contemporary American Chick Lit." Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences 70, no. 11: 4284.

Benstock, Shari. 

"Afterword: The New Woman's Fiction." Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction. Ed. Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young. New York: Routledge, 2006. 253-???.

Boyd, Elizabeth B. 

"Ya Yas, Grits, and Sweet Potato Queens: Contemporary Southern Belles and the Prescriptions That Guide Them." Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction. Ed. Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young. New York: Routledge, 2006. 159-172.

Butler, Pamela and Jigna Desai. 

“Manolos, Marriage, and Mantras: Chick-Lit Criticism and Transnational Feminism.” Meridians 8.2 (2008): 1-31. Abstract

Craddock, Louise. 

"Bridget Jones's Little Red Dress: Chicklit, Mass-market Popular Romance and Feminism." Diegesis: Journal of the Association for Research in Popular Fictions 8 (2004): 43-51. Whole issue as pdf.

D-F

Davis-Kahl, Stephanie. 

"The Case for Chick Lit in Academic Libraries." Collection Building 27.1 (2008): 18-21. Abstract and link to pdf

Dorney, Kate. 

"Shop Boys and Girls! Interpellating Readers as Consumers in Chicklit and Ladlit." Diegesis: Journal of the Association for Research in Popular Fictions 8 (2004): 12-22. Whole issue as pdf.

Ferriss, Suzanne and Mallory Young. 

"Introduction." Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction. Ed. Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young. New York: Routledge, 2006. 1-16.

Ferriss, Suzanne and Mallory Young. 

“Chicks, Girls and Choice: Redefining Feminism.” Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue 6 (2006): 87-97. [1]

Ferris, Suzanne. 

"Narrative and Cinematic Doubleness: Pride and Prejudice and Bridget Jones's Diary." Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction. Ed. Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young. New York: Routledge, 2006. 71-??.

G-I

Gamble, Sarah. 

"When Romantic Heroines Turn Bad: The Rise of the ‘Anti-Chicklit’ Novel." Chick Lit. Working Papers on the Web 13 (2009). Ed. Sarah Gormley and Sara Mills.[2]

Gill, Rosalind. 

"Lad lit as mediated intimacy: A postfeminist tale of female power, male vulnerability and toast." Chick Lit. Working Papers on the Web 13 (2009). Ed. Sarah Gormley and Sara Mills.[3]

Gill, Rosalind and Elena Herdieckerhoff. 

"Rewriting the Romance: New Femininities in Chick Lit?" Feminist Media Studies 6.4 (2006): 487-504. [Abstract and pdf available from LSE Research Online]

Gormley, Sarah. 

"Introduction." Chick Lit. Working Papers on the Web 13 (2009). Ed. Sarah Gormley and Sara Mills.[4]

Gorton, Kristyn. 

"'Kiss My Tiara': Chicklit and Female Empowerment." Diegesis: Journal of the Association for Research in Popular Fictions 8 (2004): 23-28. Whole issue as pdf.

Guerrero, Lisa A. 

"'Sistahs Are Doin' It For Themselves': Chick Lit in Black and White." Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction. Ed. Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young. New York: Routledge, 2006. 87-102.

Hale, Elizabeth. 

"Long-Suffering Professional Females: The Case of Nanny Lit." Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction. Ed. Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young. New York: Routledge, 2006. 103-118.

Harzewski, Stephanie. 

"Tradition and Displacement in the New Novel of Manners." Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction. Ed. Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young. New York: Routledge, 2006. 29–46.

Harzewski, Stephanie. 

"The new novel of manners: Chick lit and postfeminist sexual politics" (January 1, 2006). Dissertations available from ProQuest. Paper AAI3225468. [Abstract http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI3225468]

Harzewski, Stephanie. 

Chick Lit and Postfeminism. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011.

Hewett, Heather. 

"You Are Not Alone: The Personal, the Political and the 'New' Mommy Lit." Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction. Ed. Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young. New York: Routledge, 2006. 119-140.

Horrocks, Clare. 

"Tart Noir: Chicklit with Criminal Balls." Diegesis: Journal of the Association for Research in Popular Fictions 8 (2004): 59-64. Whole issue as pdf.

Hurst, Rochelle. “The Barrister’s Bedmate

Harlequin Mills & Boon and the Bridget Jones Debate.” Australian Feminist Studies 24.62 (2009): 453-468. [Feminist critique of Harlequin Mills & Boons (especially a selection by Emma Darcy) and comparison with Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones novels. For a discussion of why many aspects of this essay's methodology are troubling, from an academic perspective, see this article by Jessica at Read React Review].

Isbister, Georgina C. 

"Chick Lit: A Postfeminist Fairy Tale." Chick Lit. Working Papers on the Web 13 (2009). Ed. Sarah Gormley and Sara Mills.[5]

J-L

Johnson, Joanna Webb. 

"Chick Lit Jnr.: More Than Glitz and Glamour for Teens and Tweens." Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction. Ed. Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young. New York: Routledge, 2006. 141-158.

Kiernan, Anna. 

"No Satisfaction: Sex and the City, Run Catch Kiss, and the Conflict of Desires in Chick Lit's New Heroines." Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction. Ed. Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young. New York: Routledge, 2006. 207-218.

Knowles, Joanne. 

"Editorial." Diegesis: Journal of the Association for Research in Popular Fictions 8 (2004): 3-4. Whole issue as pdf.

Knowles, Joanne. 

"Material Girls: Location and Economics in Chicklit Fiction, Or, How Singletons Finance Their Jimmy Choo Collections." Diegesis: Journal of the Association for Research in Popular Fictions 8 (2004): 37-42. Whole issue as pdf.

Konchar Farr, Cecilia. 

"It Was Chick Lit All Along: The Gendering of a Genre." You've Come A Long Way Baby: Women, Politics, and Popular Culture. Ed. Lilly J. Goren. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2009. 201-214. Excerpt

Lerman, Amy S. 

“Jane Green and the Contemporary ‘Singleton’: Why Women Can Laugh at their Bachelorette Predicaments.” The 2000-2003 Proceedings of the SW/Texas PCA/ACA Conference. Ed. Leslie Fife. 1285-1298.

M-O

Mabry, A. Rochelle. 

"About a Girl: Female Subjectivity and Sexuality in Contemporary 'Chick' Culture." Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction. Ed. Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young. New York: Routledge, 2006. 191-206.

Mazza, Cris. 

"Who's Laughing Now? A Short History of Chick Lit and the Perversion of a Genre." Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction. Ed. Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young. New York: Routledge, 2006. 17-28.

Moody, Nickianne. 

"Empathy and Irony in the Soundtrack to Chicklit." Diegesis: Journal of the Association for Research in Popular Fictions 8 (2004): 52-58. Whole issue as pdf.

P-R

Pérez-Serrano, Elena. 

"Chick Lit and Marian Keyes: The ideological background of the genre." Chick Lit. Working Papers on the Web 13 (2009). Ed. Sarah Gormley and Sara Mills.[6]

S-U

Smith, Caroline J. 

Cosmopolitan Culture and Consumerism in Chick Lit. New York: Routledge, 2008. Excerpt

Smyczyńska, Katarzyna. 

"Commitment Phobia and Emotional Fuckwittage: Postmillennial Constructions of Male 'Other' in Chicklit Novels." Diegesis: Journal of the Association for Research in Popular Fictions 8 (2004): 29-36. Whole issue as pdf.

Smyczyńska, Katarzyna. 

The World According to Bridget Jones: Discourses of Identity in Chicklit Fictions. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2007.

Sellei, Nora. 

"Bridget Jones and Hungarian Chick Lit." Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction. Ed. Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young. New York: Routledge, 2006. 173-???.

Umminger, Alison. 

"Supersizing Bridget Jones: What's Really Eating the Women in Chick Lit." Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction. Ed. Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young. New York: Routledge, 2006. 239-???.

V-Z

Van Slooten, Jessica Lyn. 

"Fashionably Indebted: Conspicuous Consumption, Fashion, and Romance in Sophie Kinsella's Shopaholic Trilogy." Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction. Ed. Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young. New York: Routledge, 2006. 219-238.

Wells, Juliette. 

"Mother of Chick Lit? Women Writers, Readers, and Literary History." Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction. Ed. Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young. New York: Routledge, 2006. 47-70.

Whelehan, Imelda. 

Overloaded: Popular Culture and the Future of Feminism. London: The Women’s Press Ltd., 2000. [Looks at various aspects of popular culture: men's magazines (Loaded, Maxim, GQ); TV shows (Ally McBeal, Sex in the City, Men Behaving Badly) and novels (Bridget Jones' Diary).]

Whelehan, Imelda. 

Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary: A Reader’s Guide. New York: Continuum, 2002. Excerpt

Whelehan, Imelda. 

"Sex and the Single Girl: Helen Fielding, Erica Jong and Helen Gurley Brown." Essays and Studies 2004: Contemporary British Women Writers. Ed. Emma Parker. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004.

Whelehan, Imelda. 

"High Anxiety: Feminism, Chicklit And Women In The Noughties." Diegesis: Journal of the Association for Research in Popular Fictions 8 (2004): 5-11. Whole issue as pdf.

Whelehan, Imelda. 

"Teening Chick Lit?" Chick Lit. Working Papers on the Web 13 (2009). Ed. Sarah Gormley and Sara Mills.[7]