Temporal Trends in Feminist Film Scholarship: A Bibliometric Study of the Female Gaze (1987–2026)

This bibliometric study tracks the growth of feminist film scholarship on the female gaze in the English language from 1987 to 2026, mapping 210 publications (126 articles, 55 book chapters, 13 books, 11 reviews, 2 conference papers, 1 letter) catalogued in Scopus. Applying keyword co-occurrence, citation analysis, and temporal mapping, this research maps the most influential topics, authors, and discourses on the female gaze. It discovers that the number of publications has increased since 2000 correlated with the intersectional critiques of Mulvey’s male gaze theory and digital media studies. The most fashionable clusters include the debates on the agency of women in representation, queer and transnational reimagining of the gaze, and the methodological tensions between psychoanalytic and materialist methods. The study also finds that the Anglophone scholarly institutions have been overrepresented, and the emerging Global South scholars are yet to influence the field. The study is limited by the Scopus bias toward Western academia and the gray literature. The analysis charts not only the conceptual expansion of the female gaze but also the gaps in the literature, such as the limited responses to non-Western cinematic traditions and digital participatory cultures. The paper ends with suggestions for future interdisciplinary research that could bridge film theory, digital humanities, and postcolonial studies.