The Lady Knows the Recipe: Challenges of Carrying Out a Feminist Study of Hollywood Romantic Comedy

This article outlines the methodology of my PhD thesis, which examined the reception of contemporary Hollywood romantic comedy in Britain, France and Germany. I underline the significant epistemological and methodological shift which took place over the course of four years, as my research went from a positivist mixed-methods study aiming to describe national differences in reception, to a constructivist and qualitative interrogation of the specific pleasures of romantic comedy viewing as manifested by a small group of participants. I conclude that whilst there is no single perfect feminist methodology, doing feminist research must include a degree of self-introspection at all stages of the research, from recruitment to data collection to analysis