Hilary Radner, Alistair Fox and Irene Bessiere (eds), Jane Campion: Cinema, Nation, Identity (Contemporary Approaches to Film and Television Series). Detroit, IL: Wayne State University Press, 2009, 329 pp. Deb Verhoeven, Jane Campion (Routledge Film Guidebooks). London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2009, 273 pp.

The field of 'Campion studies', as it has become known, has been reinvigorated by the release of Jane Campion's first feature film in six years, Bright Star (2009), and the timely publication of two new books: Deb Verhoeven's monograph, simply titled Jane Campion, and the edited collection, Jane Campion: Cinema, Nation, Identity. Together these books offer a detailed and thorough examination of not only Campion's films but her persona as an auteur, as a woman director and as an 'antipodean' filmmaker. As such they constitute an important intervention in current theorizing about the contemporary auteur (or the 'post-auteur'), as well as a substantial contribution to our understanding of Campion's cinema.