New Open Access Book: Ensuring a trailblazing trio of women are included in our celebration of film, entrepreneurship, and sit on the cutting edge of developments across the new media landscape

Transnational Trailblazers

Transnational Trailblazers of Early Cinema: Sarah Bernhardt, Gabrielle Réjane, Mistinguett was the culmination of more than seven years of archival research across France, Italy, the UK, and the United States — though in many ways it grew out of a much longer commitment to understanding women's central role in the emerging entertainment industries.

The book traces how performers such as Sarah Bernhardt, Gabrielle Réjane, and Mistinguett helped shape modern celebrity culture, screen performance, and transnational media networks at the turn of the twentieth century. Working across archives, film prints, theatre histories, journalism, and popular culture, the project sought to place women back at the centre of early cinema history.

Publishing the book with the University of California Press carried deep personal significance for me as a UCLA graduate. UCLA shaped me intellectually, and many of the questions that informed this research began there — in conversations about history, performance, feminism, archives, and the politics of visibility.

More than anything, this book was driven by a desire to recover artists whose influence was immense, but whose histories have too often been fragmented, marginalised, or forgotten.