GWS 418: Gender, Sexuality and the Media (Fall 2024) : Books

Femininity and Feminism in Spanish TV Dramas by Anja Louis Recent social and political events in Spain have prompted a resurgence of feminism in the Spanish public sphere. Popular culture intervenes in these debates, and television does so specifically through the dramas which foreground female stories and female subjects, in many cases redefining and interpreting key moments in the progression of national gender politics. This pioneering study maps these developing concerns onto a selection of TV dramas which centre on feminisms and female identities, and as such are key interlocutors in social change. Our intention is to mainstream Spanish television studies and, in our analysis of its innovative and varied approach to gender politics, to take it out of the ‘interpretative isolation ward’ (Smith 2006). This monograph fills a significant gap in the literature on transnational popular culture; it is ground-breaking in its interdisciplinarity (television, modern languages, gender studies) and is the first of its kind in English. Anja Louis completed her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Hispanic Studies at Birkbeck College (University of London). She is Professor of Transnational Pop Culture at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. She is REF coordinator and member of the research leadership team. She has previously worked at the Universities of Sheffield, New York and Suffolk/Boston. She has published widely in the fields of gender studies, law and popular culture. Her monograph Women and the Law: Carmen de Burgos, an Early Feminist is a seminal study on the Spanish feminist Carmen de Burgos. She has also co-edited a collection of essays that brings together leading international specialists of Burgos's work (Multiple Modernities: Carmen de Burgos, Author and Activist, Routledge, 2017). More recently, her research projects examine the representation of female lawyers and law enforcement officers in film and television. Abigail Loxham completed her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the University of Cambridge,UK. She is a Reader in Hispanic Film Studies at the University of Liverpool and has previously worked at the Universities of Hull, Queensland and Manchester. She has published on cinema from Spain with a focus on Catalonia, gender and Spanish film, television and memory and more recently gender and postfeminism in Spanish TV drama. More recently her focus has been on popular mediations of feminism in contemporary Spanish culture with a focus on celebrity feminist writers, creators, actors and podcasters.

Working Women on Screen : Paid Labour and Fourth Wave Feminism by Ellie Tomsett “This is a wide-ranging and timely collection with a sharp critical and analytical lens on the current realm of popular representations of women and work in the frame of neoliberal culture. It will be immensely useful for teachers and researchers in feminist media studies.” Angela McRobbie, Professor Emeritus Goldsmiths University of London, UK. “This book sheds new light on the ways in which women’s paid labour is depicted in the contemporary moment. It is both necessary and vital and unpicks the complexities of how limited and often damaging screen representations are suffused in the contemporary media landscape.” Kirsty Fairclough, Professor of Screen Studies, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Working Women on Screen: Paid Labour and Fourth Wave Feminism critically examines screen media representations of women’s participation in the contemporary labour market. Withinthe context of fourth wave feminism, there has been a new proliferation in the global media landscape of representations of women’s paid labour. This has coincided with the development of critical and ideological issues surrounding intersectionality and culture wars, as well as the impacts of recessions, political upheavals, and pandemics. Workplace dynamics and post-#MeToo politics have led to the complexification of structures, oppressions and relationships that impact what women can do for money. As a result, the “working woman” is now a constant presence on our screens, though articulated in widely divergent ways. The chapters within this collection critique issues that are deeply embedded in neoliberal conceptions of contemporary feminism, such as aspects of “lean-in” culture, structural oppression, and women’s experiences of the “glass ceiling” and “glass cliff”. The volume analyses representations related to the intersecting dynamics of gender, race, class, sexuality, and disability in television, film, social media and video games.

Producing Feminism by Jennifer S. Clark A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In this deeply archival work, Jennifer S. Clark explores the multiple ways in which women's labor in the American television industry of the 1970s furthered feminist ends. Carefully crafted around an impressive assemblage of interviews and primary sources (from television network memos to programming schedules, production notes to executive meeting agendas), Clark tells the story of how women organized in the workplace to form collectives, affect production labor, and develop reform-oriented policies and philosophies that reshaped television behind the screen. She urges us to consider how interventions, often at localized levels, can collectively shift the dynamics of a workplace and the cultural products created there.

There She Goes Again by Aviva Dove-Viebahn

Maid for Television by L. S. Kim Maid for Television examines race, class, and gender relations as embodied in a long history of television servants from 1950 to the turn of the millennium. Although they reside at the visual peripheries, these figures are integral to the idealized American family. Author L. S. Kim redirects viewers' gaze towards the usually overlooked interface between characters, which is drawn through race, class, and gender positioning. Maid for Television tells the stories of servants and the families they work for, in so doing it investigates how Americans have dealt with difference through television as a medium and a mediator.The book philosophically redirects the gaze of television and its projection of racial discourse.  

Women, Film, and Law by Suzanne Bouclin Entertainment and profit constitute the driving forces behind most popular representations of incarcerated women. Some cinematic representations, however, and the women-in-prison genre especially, can generate complex legal meanings and leave viewers feeling unsettled about women's incarceration. Focusing on five exemplary films and one television series, from 1933 to the present, Women, Film, and Law asks how fictional representations explore, shape, and refine beliefs about women's incarceration. Suzanne Bouclin convincingly argues that popular depictions of women's prisons can illuminate multiple forms of marginalization and oppression experienced by women in conflict with the law.

Stealing the show : how women are revolutionizing television by Joy Press From a leading cultural journalist, a definitive look at the rise of the female showrunner--and a new golden era of television. Female writers, directors, and producers have radically transformed the television industry in recent years. Shonda Rhimes, Lena Dunham, Tina Fey, Amy Schumer, Mindy Kaling: These extraordinary women have shaken up the entertainment landscape, making it look like an equal opportunity dream factory. But things weren't always this rosy. It took decades of determination in the face of preconceived ideas and outright prejudice to reach this new era. In this endlessly informative and wildly entertaining book, veteran journalist Joy Press tells the story of the maverick women who broke through the barricades, starting with Roseanne Barr (Roseanne) and Diane English (Murphy Brown), whose iconic shows redefined America's idea of "family values" and incited controversy that reached as far as the White House. Barr and English inspired the next generation of female TV writers and producers to carve out the creative space and executive power needed to present radically new representations of women on the small screen. Showrunners like Amy Sherman Palladino (Gilmore Girls), Jenji Kohan (Weeds, Orange Is the New Black), and Jill Soloway (Transparent) created characters and storylines that changed how women are seen and how they see themselves, in the process transforming the culture. Stealing the Show is the perfect companion to such bestsellers as Mindy Kaling's Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Tina Fey's Bossypants, and Shonda Rhimes' Year of Yes¸ not to mention Sheila Weller's Girls Like Us and Rebecca Traister's All the Single Ladies. Drawing on deep research and interviews with the key players, this is the exhilarating behind-the-scenes story of a truly groundbreaking revolution in television.

Tits and Clits 1972-1987 by Joyce Farmer; Lyn Chevli; Trina Robbins In 1972, underground cartoonists Joyce Farmer and Lyn Chevli produced Tits & Clits - a funny, rowdy, raucous underground comix series about female sexuality that one reviewer described as 'the ultimate in vaginal politics' - and became the first American women ever credited with writing, drawing, and publishing their own comic books. A feminist answer to Zap, Tits & Clits quickly became an anthology showcase for other women cartoonists, featuring the work of Mary Fleener, Roberta Gregory, Krystine Kryttre, Lee Marrs, Carel Moiseiwitsch, Trina Robbins, Dori Seda, among others. Like other underground comix, Tits & Clits leaned into being lewd in order to satirise women's experiences with so-called sexual liberation. Featuring stories about birth control, abortion, menstruation, masturbation, and more, Tits & Clits featured intimate politics which occasionally clashed with contemporaneous feminist concepts about sex and sexuality. As Chevli put it: their work had something to offend everyone. (In 1973, conservative legal authorities in Orange County deemed their work pornographic and even threatened the two editors with arrest on obscenity charges.) Now, for the first time in half a century, a new generation of readers will be shocked, entertained, enlightened, and scandalised by the bold satirical cartoonists that comprised the band of sisters in Tits & Clits. In addition to reprinting the seven-issue run of the Tits & Clits series, this collection also includes in their entirety two classic solo comics from 1972 written and drawn by Farmer and Chevli - Abortion Eve and Pandora's Box. Also included is an introductory essay providing context to Tits & Clits' place in the history of women's cartooning by the book's editor, Samantha Meier.

Intersectional Feminist Readings of Comics by Sandra Cox (Editor) Intersectional Feminist Readings of Comics collects several theoretically informed close reading of comics and graphic literature that apply an intersectional feminist lens to the interpretation of several contemporary North American graphic narratives. The essays examine use a range of interpretive lenses drawn from theoretical models used in contemporary aesthetics, media studies, and literary criticism to analyze mainstream figures like DC's Catwoman and Marvel's Miss America and Doctor Strange, to contextualize historical and speculative comics by Indigenous American illustrators, and to explicate autography by critically lauded Jewish, queer and female cartoonists. In the first half of the book, the chapters examine ways in which superhero comics and the cinematic and televisual adaptations thereof, reify, revise and reject gender parity, systemic misogyny and heteropatriarchy through visual and textual rhetorics of representation. In the second part of the volume, the chapters look at the ways that feminist interpretive practices illuminate the radical work undertaken by cartoonists from historically marginalized communities in the U.S. and Canada. Across both halves, readers will find applications of longstanding feminist critical traditions, like ecofeminism, as well as new intersectional extrapolations of narratology, autobiographical studies, and visual rhetoric, which have been applied to the selected comics in insightful and innovative ways. This is a lively and varied collection suitable for students and scholars in gender studies, cultural studies, media studies and literary studies.

Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel by Carolyn Cocca This book explores representations of Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel in comics and film, as well as political struggles over these works, to illuminate contemporary cultural concerns about gender, sexuality, race, migration, imperialism, and war. It focuses on the only two female superheroes who have long histories grounded in feminist activism and military service, and who have starred in blockbuster origin films at a time when resurgent progressive activism has been met by an emboldened backlash against movements for equality. Interdisciplinary and intersectional, the book employs insights from political science and political economy, feminist theories, critical race theory, postcolonial theory, and queer theory to explore how these characters' feminism and militarism render them particularly appealing and profitable in contentious times. This is a concise, accessible text suitable for students and scholars in comics studies, media studies, film studies, and women's and gender studies.

The Routledge Companion to Gender and Sexuality in Comic Book Studies by Frederick Luis Aldama (Editor) The Routledge Companion to Gender and Sexuality in Comic Book Studies is a comprehensive, global, and interdisciplinary examination of the essential relationship between Gender, Sexuality, Comics, and Graphic Novels. A diverse range of international and interdisciplinary scholars take a closer look at how gender and sexuality have been essential in the evolution of comics, and how gender and sexuality in comics demand that we re-frame and re-view comics history. Chapters cover a wide array of intersectional topics including Queer Underground and Alternative comics, Feminist Autobiography, re-drawing disability, Latina testimony, and re-evaluating the critical whiteness and masculinity of superheroes in this first truly global reference text to gender and sexuality in comics. Comics have always been an important place for the radical exploration of feminist and non-binary sexualities and identities, and the growth of non-normative comic book traditions as a field of inquiry makes this an essential text for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers studying Comics Studies, Women's and Gender Studies, Literary Studies, and Cultural Studies.

Writing a Riot by Sharon R. Mazzarella (Series edited by); Rebekah J. Buchanan Riot grrrls, punk feminists best known for their girl power activism and message, used punk ideologies and the literacy practice of zine-ing to create radical feminist sites of resistance. In what ways did zines document feminism and activism of the 1990s? How did riot grrrls use punk ideologies to participate in DIY sites? In Writing a Riot: Riot Grrl Zines and Feminist Rhetorics, Buchanan argues that zines are a form of literacy participation used to document personal, social, and political values within punk. She examines zine studies as an academic field, how riot grrrls used zines to promote punk feminism, and the ways riot grrrl zines dealt with social justice issues of rape and race. Writing a Riot is the first full-length book that examines riot grrrl zines and their role in documenting feminist history.

Making Feminist Media by Elizabeth Groeneveld Making Feminist Media provides new ways of thinking about the vibrant media and craft cultures generated by Riot Grrrl and feminism's third wave. It focuses on a cluster of feminist publications--including BUST, Bitch, HUES, Venus Zine, and Rockrgrl--that began as zines in the 1990s. By tracking their successes and failures, this book provides insight into the politics of feminism's recent past. Making Feminist Media brings together interviews with magazine editors, research from zine archives, and analysis of the advertising, articles, editorials, and letters to the editor found in third-wave feminist magazines. It situates these publications within the long history of feminist publishing in the United States and Canada and argues that third-wave feminist magazines share important continuities and breaks with their historical forerunners. These publishing lineages challenge the still-dominant--and hotly contested-- wave metaphor categorization of feminist culture. The stories, struggles, and strategies of these magazines not only represent contemporary feminism, they create and shape feminist cultures. The publications provide a feminist counter-public sphere in which the competing interests of editors, writers, readers, and advertisers can interact. Making Feminist Media argues that reading feminist magazines is far more than the consumption of information or entertainment: it is a profoundly intimate and political activity that shapes how readers understand themselves and each other as feminist thinkers.

The Evolution of Black Women in Television: mammies, matriarchs and mistresses by Imani M. Cheers This book seeks to interrogate the representation of Black women in television. Cheers explores how the increase of Black women in media ownership and creative executive roles (producers, showrunners, directors and writers) in the last 30 years affected the fundamental cultural shift in Black women's representation on television, which in turn parallels the political, social, economic and cultural advancements of Black women in America from 1950 to 2016. She also examines Black women as a diverse television audience, discussing how they interact and respond to the constantly evolving television representation of their image and likeness, looking specifically at how social media is used as a tool of audience engagement.