School of Creative Arts, Film and Media (SCAFM)

I work as Senior Lecturer in the Media Studies department of the University of Portsmouth, with interests in print media and feminism, and particularly in women’s magazines.  Both my teaching and research have an emphasis on critical and cultural theories, and my research and publications explore ways in which creative expression relates to the cultural and social context.

My research interests fall into a number of related areas including women’s writing, women’s cultures, feminism, and media representations of women.  I have a particular research and publication interest in women’s magazines and their cultural contexts.  Magazines, lifestyle television, television drama, novels, short stories and science fiction are all media forms and genres which interest me and have informed my writing.  Recent publications include work on feminism and women’s magazines; modernism, war and May Sinclair; and 1970s British television.  I am presently writing a monograph on women’s magazines, looking at the political and social impact some magazines have had on British women’s history.

Current Research

Forster, L. (In preparation).  Magazine Movements: Women’s Culture, Feminisms and Media Form.  This book examines the direct engagement of British magazines, both print and broadcast formats, with different kinds of feminism from the 1950s to the twenty first century. It will be a work of critical analysis as well as recovery. Forgotten magazines, limited circulation magazines, specialist group magazines as well as better-known examples of feminist magazines will form the basis of the discussion. (Bloomsbury 2013) 

Publications^{[Back to top]}

Publications since 2008 [IR]

Books^{[Back to top]}

Forster, L. (2013). Magazine Movements: Women’s Culture, Feminisms and Media Form. London: Bloomsbury.

Co-Edited Books^{[Back to top]}

Forster, L., & Harper, S. (Eds.). (2010). British Culture and Society in the 1970s: The Lost Decade. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Floyd, J., & Forster, L. (Eds.). (2003). The recipe reader: narratives, contexts, traditions.  Aldershot: Ashgate. ISBN 07546-0864-6.

Book Chapters^{[Back to top]}

Forster, L. (2013). An Optimistic Apocalypse: Utopian and Dystopian Impulses in Survivors. In Utopia Now.  North Carolina: Duke University Press.

Forster, L. (2011). 1970s television: a self-conscious decade.  In S. Harper & J. Smith (Eds.), British cinema in the 1970s: the boundaries of pleasure (pp. 00-00). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Forster, L. (2010). Printing Liberation: The Women’s Movement and Magazines in the 1970s.  In L. Forster & S. Harper (Eds.), British Culture and Society in the 1970: The Lost Decade (pp. 85-98). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Forster, L. (2009). Farmers, Feminists and Drop-outs: The disguises of the scientist in British science fiction television in the 1970s.  In L. Geraghty (Ed.), Channeling the Future: Essays on Science Fiction and Fantasy Television (pp.75-92).  Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press.

Forster, L. (2009). Making the Most of Feedback.  In R. Doughty, & D. Shaw (Eds.), Film: The Essential Study Guide, (pp. 147-154).  Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Forster, L. (2008). Revealing the Inner Housewife: Housework and History in Domestic Lifestyle Television.  In G. Palmer (Ed.), Exposing Lifestyle Television: The Big Reveal (pp. 101-115).  Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing.

Forster, L. (2008). Women and War Zones: May Sinclair’s Personal Negotiation with the First World War.  In T. Gomez Reus, & A. Usandizaga (Eds.), Inside Out: Women negotiating, subverting, appropriating public and private space (pp. 229-248).  Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Forster, L. (2005). ‘Imagism is a state of soul’:Sinclair’s imagist writing and Life and Death of Harriet Frean.  In M. Troy & A. Kunka (Eds.), May Sinclair: moving towards the modern (pp.  99-122). Aldershot: Ashgate.

Forster, L. (2004). Futuristic foodways: the metaphorical meaning of food in science fiction film. In A. Bower (Ed.), Reel food: essays on food and film (pp. 251-265). London: Routledge.

Floyd, J. & Forster, L. (2003). The recipe in its cultural contexts. In J. Floyd & L. Forster (Eds.), The recipe reader: narratives, contexts, traditions (pp. 1-14).  Aldershot: Ashgate.

Forster, L. (2003b). Liberating the recipe: a study of the relationship between food and  feminism in the early 1970s. In J. Floyd & L. Forster (Eds.), The recipe reader: narratives, contexts, traditions (pp. 147-168). Aldershot: Ashgate.
  
Forster, L. (2003a). ‘Nature’s double vitality experiment’: May Sinclair’s interpretation of the New Woman. In A. Heilmann (Ed.), Feminist forerunners: new women and feminism in the early twentieth century (pp. 166-178). London: Pandora Press.

Book Reviews^{[Back to top]}

Review of  Maria DiCenzo with Lucy Delap and Leila Ryan Feminist Media History : Suffrage, Periodicals and the Public Sphere (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011) for Women’s History Review  2012.

Invited Guest/Plenary Lectures ^{[Back to top]}

Public Lectures

28 March 2009 ‘How to be a feminist: Women’s Magazines of the 1970s’ at The Women’s Library, London.

25 Feb 2012 ‘The Survival of the 70s: Nostalgia Culture and Society’ Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Plenary Speaker

10 March 2012 ‘Magazine Issues: Print Media and Feminist Agendas’ Queen’s University, Belfast.

Conference Papers^{[Back to top]}

16 May 2013 ‘Houseparty: A Feminist Phenomenon?’  at Television for Women Conference, University of Warwick.

23 June 2012 ‘The War, the Housewife and a Feminist Editor’ at Women in Magazines Conference, Kingston University, London.