Fox, Jo 1973- (Joanne Clare Fox)

PERSONAL:

Born June 30, 1973.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Durham University, Department of History, 43 North Bailey, Durham DH1 3EX, England. E-mail—j.c.fox@durham.ac.uk.

CAREER:

Durham University, Durham, England, senior lecturer in history.

AWARDS, HONORS:

National Teaching Fellow, 2007.

WRITINGS:

Filming Women in the Third Reich, Berg (New York, NY), 2000.

Film Propaganda in Britain and Nazi Germany: World War II Cinema, Berg (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor of essays to anthologies, including The Cinema and the Swastika: The International Expansion of the Third Reich Cinema, Making Reputations: Power, Persuasion and the Individual in Modern British Politics, and War and the Media: Reportage and Propaganda 1900-2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

In Filming Women in the Third Reich, Jo Fox explores the ways in which the Nazi party shaped the content of films to communicate views about women's proper role in Nazi society and in the war effort. As Fox makes clear, women were the primary audience for films during the war years because so many men had been deployed to the battlefront. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels oversaw efforts to influence filmmakers to depict German women as supportive and loyal to their absent husbands and lovers and willing to make the necessary sacrifices at home to ensure the success of the war effort.

Fox broadens her scope in Film Propaganda in Britain and Nazi Germany: World War II Cinema. This book examines the ways in which both Germany and Britain exploited cinema—including both explicit propaganda films and more escapist movie fare—for their respective political ends. In a review in Screening the Past, Colin Crisp wrote that the book is informative but disappointing in that it does not offer any theoretical framework for its thesis. "There is too much description and too little analysis," observed Crisp, and "Fox's own argument about the films is rather unremarkable." Nevertheless, the critic noted that the book contains useful material and provides readers with "a good idea of the initial problems facing the national film industry in both countries when war broke out, and the way in which these evolved as the fortunes of war themselves evolved." Also writing in Screening the Past, Michael Paris concluded in his review: "Well-written, comprehensively researched, Film Propaganda in Britain and Nazi Germany has much to offer the student of British and German wartime propaganda."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, July 1, 2001, M. Yacowar, review of Filming Women in the Third Reich, p. 1968.

German Quarterly, winter, 2003, Joan Clinefelter, review of Filming Women in the Third Reich, p. 121.

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, October, 2001, Elizabeth Tacey, review of Filming Women in the Third Reich, p. 417; October, 2005, "Nazi Actresses as Trojan Horses? ‘New’ and ‘Traditional’ Interpretations of Third Reich Film Representations of Women," review of Filming Women in the Third Reich, p. 647.

Journal of Women's History, summer, 2002, Lyra Totten-Naylor, review of Filming Women in the Third Reich, p. 200.

Times Higher Education Supplement, March 2, 2001, Richard Griffiths, review of Filming Women in the Third Reich, p. 30.

ONLINE

Durham University, Department of History Web site,http://www.dur.ac.uk/ (February 12, 2008), Jo Fox faculty profile.

Screening the Past,http://www.latrobe.edu.au/ (December 4, 2007), Michael Paris, review of Film Propaganda in Britain and Nazi Germany: World War II Cinema; (February 12, 2008), Colin Crisp, review of Film Propaganda in Britain and Nazi Germany.