Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction / Heather Addison, Mary Kate Goodwin-Kelly, Elaine Roth -- Pregnant body and/as smoking gun : reviewing the evidence of Fargo / Mary Kate Goodwin-Kelly -- Mother's day : taking the mother out of motherhood in The Thrill of It All / Tamar Jeffers McDonald -- Not exactly according to the rules: pregnancy and motherhood in Sugar & Spice / Madonne M. Miner -- Modernizing mother : the maternal figure in early Hollywood / Heather Addison -- "Whose baby are you?'' : mother/daughter discourse in the star images of Mary Pickford and Joan Crawford / Gaylyn Studlar -- "You just hate men!'' : maternal sexuality and the nuclear family in Gas, Food, Lodging / Elaine Roth -- Hollywood's "moms'' and postwar America / Mike Chopra-Gant -- Alfred Hitchcock and the phobic maternal body / Mun-Hou Lo -- Paranoia, cold surveillance, and the maternal gaze : reconsidering the "absent mother'' in Ordinary People / Mark Harper -- Scream, popular culture, and feminism's third wave : "I'm not my mother'' / Kathleen Rowe Karlyn -- Great ladies and guttersnipes : class and the representation of southern mothers in Hollywood films / Aimee Berger -- "Don't say mammy'' : Camille Billops's meditations on Black motherhood / Janet K. Cutler -- From dad to mom : transgendered motherhood in Transamerica / Mary M. Dalton.