Annabel Hogg
Doctoral Student in Literature - Annabel's thesis is entitled: 'Girl Coded: Chick Lit, Magazine culture, and Gendered Cultural Communication'
Research Project Title:
Girl Coded: Chick Lit, Magazine culture, and Gendered Cultural Communication
Supervisors:
Dr Ros Haslett + Dr Kirsten MacLeod
Contact Details:
Email: a.j.hogg2@newcastle.ac.uk
Brief Outline of Research Project:
Chick lit is understood as a historically bounded phenomenon, closely tied to the postfeminist culture of the 1990s and early 2000s. Following a flurry of scholarly work (Ferris & Young 2006; Wells 2006; McRobbie 2007; Harzewski 2011), scholarship on chick lit – particularly on its most recognisable texts such as Bridget Jones’s Diary and Sex and the City – has largely declined in recent years, aside from a growing focus on non-Anglo-American forms (Kriegel 2026; Simran 2024; Rudin 2023). Earlier critical work broadly situated chick lit within the cultural logic of postfeminism, often reading it as both a product of and response to the perceived gains of second-wave feminism, while also engaging with emerging discourses of third-wave feminism, including the emphasis on individual choice and sexual agency. This body of scholarship frequently debated whether chick lit should be understood as complicit in reinforcing postfeminist and neoliberal ideals or as offering a space for negotiating and reworking them. Notably, however, chick lit has received comparatively little sustained attention during the rise of fourth-wave feminism and the #MeToo era.