COM ARTS 418: Gender, Sexuality and the Media (Fall 2024) : Books
This research guide will help those looking for resources on gender and sexuality in media, specifically those in COM ARTS 418.
Women in film and TV
- 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.ISBN: 9783031643699Publication Date: 2024
- 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.ISBN: 9783031495762Publication Date: 2024
- 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.ISBN: 9780520399303Publication Date: 2024-02-27
- 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. ISBN: 9781978827035Publication Date: 2023-08-11
- 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.ISBN: 9780774865876Publication Date: 2021-11-15
- 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.ISBN: 9781501137716Publication Date: 2018-02-27
Comics and Zines
- Comics, activism, feminism by Anna Nordenstam; Kristy Beers Fägersten; Margareta Wallin Wictorin "Comics, Activism, Feminisms explores how comic art, activism, and feminisms are intertwined from both historical and contemporary perspectives and how comic art in itself can be a form of activism. Feminist comic art emerged with the second-wave feminist movements; today, in the 2020s, there are comics connected to social activist movements working for change in a variety of areas. Comics artists often react quickly to political events and make comics on topical issues, assuming a critical or satirical stance and highlighting the need for change. Comic art can point to problems, present alternatives, and give hope. Issues pertaining to feminisms and LGBTQIA+ issues, war and political conflict, climate crisis, the global migrant and refugee situation, and other societal problems engage comics artists from all parts of the world. The chapters illuminate aesthetic and thematic aspects of comics, activism, and feminisms globally. The founding of comics collectives, where Do-it-Ourselves is a strategy among activism-oriented artists, shows the use of a great variety of media such as fanzines, albums, webcomics, and exhibitions to communicate and disseminate activist comic art. Comics, Activism, Feminisms is an essential collection for scholars and students of comics, literary, art, and media studies, and gender studies"ISBN: 9781003425397Publication Date: 2025
- 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.ISBN: 9781683966838Publication Date: 2023-03-21
- 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.ISBN: 9781000437102Publication Date: 2021-09-20
- 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.ISBN: 9780367557898Publication Date: 2022-02-02
- 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.ISBN: 9780429559303Publication Date: 2020-08-17
- 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.ISBN: 9781433150777Publication Date: 2018-02-19
- 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.ISBN: 9781771121026Publication Date: 2016-08-30
Racial representation
- 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.ISBN: 9781138201644Publication Date: 2017-07-20
Recent Books
- Ladies in Arms by Teresa Hiergeist (Editor); Stefanie Schäfer (Editor) In contemporary popular culture, armed women take center stage - but how can they be read from a feminist perspective? How do films, comics, and TV series depict the newly fashionable gunwomen between objectification and feminist empowerment? The contributions to this volume ask this question from different vantage points in cultural and literary studies, film and visual culture studies, history, and art history. They examine military and civic gun cultures, the rediscovery of historical armed women and revolutionaries, cultural phenomena such as gangsta rap, narcocultura and US politics, Bollywood and French cinema, and distinct genres such as the graphic novel, the romance novel, or the German police procedural Tatort.ISBN: 9783839469552Publication Date: 2024-03-27
- Slut narratives in popular culture by Laurie McMillan "Slut Narratives in Popular Culture explores representations of slut shaming and the term "slut" in U.S. popular media, 2000-2020. It argues that cultural narratives of intersectional gender identities are gradually but unevenly shifting to become more progressive and sex positive. Moving beyond prior research on slut shaming, which exposes problematic conflations between women's morality and a sexual purity associated with White economic privilege, this book examines how narratives that perpetuate slut shaming are both contested and reinscribed through stories we circulate. It emphasizes effects of twenty-first century developments in digital communication and entertainment. The rapid evolution of genres combined with increased access to the consumption and production of texts stimulates more diverse storytelling. The book's analyses demonstrate twenty-first changes in how slut shaming is depicted and understood, while encouraging consumers and producers of pop culture to attend to cultural narratives as they reify or challenge the subordination of vulnerable populations. Aimed primarily at an academic audience, this book will also engage general readers interested in intersectional feminism, pop culture, new media, digital technologies, and socio-linguistic change. Readers will become more adept at deconstructing assumptions embedded in popular media, especially narratives informing slut shaming"ISBN: 9781003351443Publication Date: 2025
- Women's Voices in Digital Media by Jennifer O'Meara In today's digital era, women's voices are heard everywhere--from smart home devices to social media platforms, virtual reality, podcasts, and even memes--but these new forms of communication are often accompanied by dated gender politics. In Women's Voices in Digital Media, Jennifer O'Meara dives into new and well-established media formats to show how contemporary screen media and cultural practices police and fetishize women's voices, but also provide exciting new ways to amplify and empower them. As she travels through the digital world, O'Meara discovers newly acknowledged--or newly erased--female voice actors from classic films on YouTube, meets the AI and digital avatars in Her and The Congress, and hears women's voices being disembodied in new ways via podcasts and VR voice-overs. She engages with dialogue that is spreading with only the memory of a voice, looking at how popular media like Clueless and The Simpsons have been mined for feminist memes, and encounters vocal ventriloquism on RuPaul's Drag Race that queers and valorizes the female voice. Through these detailed case studies, O'Meara argues that the digital proliferation of screens alters the reception of sounds as much as that of images, with substantial implications for women's voices.ISBN: 9781477324448Publication Date: 2022-04-26
- Gender, Race, and Class in Media by William E. Yousman (Editor); Lori Bindig Yousman (Editor); Gail Dines (Editor); Jean McMahon Humez (Editor) Gender, Race, and Class in Media provides students a comprehensive and critical introduction to media studies by encouraging them to analyze their own media experiences and interests. Editors Bill Yousman, Lori Bindig Yousman, Gail Dines, and Jean McMahon Humez explore some of the most important forms of today's popular culture--including the Internet, social media, television, films, music, and advertising--in three distinct but related areas of investigation: the political economy of production, textual analysis, and audience response. Multidisciplinary issues of power related to gender, race, and class are integrated into a wide range of articles examining the economic and cultural implications of mass media as institutions. Reflecting the rapid evolution of the field, the Sixth Edition includes 18 new readings that enhance the richness, sophistication, and diversity that characterizes contemporary media scholarship.ISBN: 9781544393421Publication Date: 2020-08-27
- Media-Ready Feminism and Everyday Sexism: how US audiences create meaning across platforms by Andrea L. Press; Francesca Tripodi Unique empirically grounded analysis of how audiences negotiate sexism and feminism across media, from popular television shows to dating apps.ISBN: 9781438481951Publication Date: 2021-03-01
- Feminist media : from the second wave to the digital age by Claire Sedgwick Feminist Media: From the Second Wave to the Digital Age analyses the relationship between second wave feminist media production and capitalism, as well as identifying the tradition that can be drawn between second wave feminism, Riot Grrrl and feminist blogging today. There has been a recent re-evaluation of the importance of second wave feminist media, demonstrated by the digitization of Spare Rib by the British Library in 2015. However, up until now, research on the magazine has been limited. This book analyses the relationship between Spare Rib and the capitalist publishing industry, comparing it to American feminist magazine Ms. The book argues that it is important to understand the cultural economies of the magazines as this had an impact on the assumed readership of the magazines, therefore having an impact on the issues that were privileged. The second half of the book charts a crucial and often overlooked link between feminist media production in the 'second wave' and more contemporary forms of feminist media activism.ISBN: 9781786610409Publication Date: 2020-08-07
- Gender, Race, and Class in Media by William E. Yousman (Editor); Lori Bindig Yousman (Editor); Gail Dines (Editor); Jean McMahon Humez (Editor) Gender, Race, and Class in Media provides students a comprehensive and critical introduction to media studies by encouraging them to analyze their own media experiences and interests. Editors Bill Yousman, Lori Bindig Yousman, Gail Dines, and Jean McMahon Humez explore some of the most important forms of today's popular culture--including the Internet, social media, television, films, music, and advertising--in three distinct but related areas of investigation: the political economy of production, textual analysis, and audience response. Multidisciplinary issues of power related to gender, race, and class are integrated into a wide range of articles examining the economic and cultural implications of mass media as institutions. Reflecting the rapid evolution of the field, the Sixth Edition includes 18 new readings that enhance the richness, sophistication, and diversity that characterizes contemporary media scholarship.ISBN: 9781544393421Publication Date: 2020-08-27
- Misogyny and Media in the Age of Trump by Maria B. Marron (Editor) Misogyny and Media in the Age of Trump argues that misogyny has increased in the United States under President Trump and that although women's experiences under misogyny are by no means universal, patriarchal social and institutional systems facilitate gender-based hostility. Systemic misogyny and power inequities are at the root of male-on-female bullying, the bullying and harassment of non-hegemonic males and other minorities as well as sexual harassment, rape, and even murder. Given the prevalence of misogyny, and its deep rootedness in religion, it is argued that the social contract needs to be rewritten in order to have a just, gender- and race-equitable society. Misogyny creates a clash of cultures between men and women, hegemonic and non-hegemonic males, feminists and INCELS, the powerful and the oppressed, natives and marginalized minorities, the conservative and the liberal/progressive. This book explores misogyny across media ranging from political and editorial cartoons to news, sport, film, television, social media (especially Twitter), and journalistic organizations that address gender inequities. The authors argue that the current era of conservative populism ushered in by President Donald Trump and the Republicans constitute the social-cultural and political environment that have given rise to the #MeToo Movement and Fourth Wave Feminism.ISBN: 9781793606181Publication Date: 2019-12-19
- Emergent Feminisms: complicating a postfeminist media culture by Jessalynn Keller (Editor); Maureen E. Ryan (Editor) Through twelve chapters that historicize and re-evaluate postfeminism as a dominant framework of feminist media studies, this collection maps out new modes of feminist media analysis at both theoretical and empirical levels and offers new insights into the visibility and circulation of feminist politics in contemporary media cultures. The essays in this collection resituate feminism within current debates about postfeminism, considering how both operate as modes of political engagement and as scholarly traditions. Authors analyze a range of media texts and practices including American television shows Being Mary Janeand Inside Amy Schumer, Beyonce's "Formation" music video, misandry memes, and Hong Kong cinema.ISBN: 9780815386605Publication Date: 2018-02-26
- Feminist Approaches to Media Theory and Research by Dustin Harp (Editor); Jaime Loke (Editor); Ingrid Bachmann (Editor) Feminist Approaches to Media Theory and Research tackles the breadth and depth of feminist perspectives in the field of media studies through essays and research that reflect on the present and future of feminist research and theory at the intersections of women, gender, media, activism, and academia. The volume includes original chapters on diverse topics illustrating where theorization and research currently stand with regard to the politics of gender and media, what work is being done in feminist theory, and how feminist scholarship can contribute to our understanding of gender as a mediated experience with implications for our contemporary global society. It opens for discussion how the research, theory, and interventions challenge concepts of gender in mediated discourses and practices and how these fit into the evolving state of contemporary feminisms. Contributors engage with discussions about contemporary feminisms as they are understood in media theory and research, particularly in a field that has changed rapidly in the last decades with digital communication tools and through cross-disciplinary work. Overall, the book illustrates how the politics of gender operate within the current media landscapes and how feminist theorizing shapes academic inquiry of these landscapes.ISBN: 9783319908373Publication Date: 2018-07-24
- Gender and the media: Women's places by Marcia Texler Segal (Editor); Vasilikie Demos (Editor) Media images shape and are shaped by society. They reflect the ways in which the social order changes and stays the same. The contributors to Gender and the Media: Women's Placesconsider a variety of media to explore the impact of what is there, as well as what is missing. Their focus is on women. Networks of the cyberbullying of women of color are rendered graphically and the agency claimed by women in Western Sahara refugee camps is shown in photos. How college women and men respond to the masculinity reflected in hip-hop lyrics and videos, and what it feels like to be a woman in a comic book store are conveyed in excerpts from interviews. Contributors detail how publications discuss rape in India and trafficking in Moldova and ponder the absence of the topic of anorexia in U.S. cinema. Social change is reflected in how trade publications discuss the increasing number of women in the funeral industry. The relation of the local to the global and female invisibility is considered in an analysis of Portuguese punk fanzines. An examination of advice books for American tween girls documents not only the subject matter, but also the racial, ethnic and religious homogeneity and heteronormativity assumed in the text and illustrations. Finally, a comparison of the critical response to identical music recorded by female and male artists provides the opportunity to see the role gender plays in criticism of aesthetic materials.ISBN: 9781787543300Publication Date: 2018-11-19
- Feminist Media: participatory spaces, networks and cultural citizenship by Ricarda Drueke (Editor); Elke Zobl (Editor) While feminists have long recognised the importance of self-managed, alternative media to transport their messages, to challenge the status quo, and to spin novel social processes, this topic has been an under-researched area. Hence, this book explores the processes of women's and feminist media production in the context of participatory spaces, technology, and cultural citizenship. The collection is composed of theoretical analyses and critical case studies. It highlights contemporary alternative feminist media in general as well as blogs, zines, culture jamming, and street art.ISBN: 9783837621570Publication Date: 2012-10-06
- The Gender and Media Reader by Mary Celeste Kearney (Editor) The Gender and Media Reader is an essential text for those interested in gender and media studies, its main topics, debates, and theoretical approaches. The primary objective of this collection is to expand readers' knowledge of how gender operates within media culture through engagement with foundational writings as well as more contemporary research in this field. Taking a multiperspectival approach that considers gender broadly and examines media texts alongside their production and consumption, The Gender and Media Reader enables readers' critical thinking about how gender is constructed, contested, and subverted in different sites within media culture. Along with the main introduction, individual section introductions facilitate readers' understanding of the development of gender and media studies by contextualizing the various topics, debates, and theoretical approaches that have shaped it, as well as by highlighting current trends.ISBN: 9780415993456Publication Date: 2011-08-03
Global
- Gender and Culture Wars in Italy : A Genealogy of Media Representations by Emiliana De Blasio This book examines contemporary culture wars around gender in Italy. Applying methods from European cultural studies, the authors reconstruct the ways in which gender issues have become part of the contemporary culture wars in Italy. Recently the convergence between neoliberalism and populism has emphasised the centrality of gender in the political arena at the global level, as well as its crucial place in the rise of far-right and alt-right formations. By examining the cases of three key debates from the last five years, this book traces the moments, actors, and argumentative strategies that triggered these culture wars around gender issues.ISBN: 9783031601101Publication Date: 2024
- Mediating Gender in Post-Authoritarian South Korea by Jesook Song (Editor); Michelle Cho (Editor) Mediating Gender in Post-Authoritarian South Korea focuses on the relationship between media representation and gender politics in South Korea. Its chapters feature notable voices of South Korea's burgeoning sphere of gender critique enabled by social media, doing what no other academic volume has yet accomplished in the sphere of Anglophone studies on this topic. Seeking to interrogate the role of popular media in establishing and shaping gendered common sense, this volume fosters cross-disciplinary conversations linked by the central thesis that gender discourse and representation are central to the politics, aesthetics, and economics of contemporary South Korea. In the post-authoritarian period (the late 1980s to the #MeToo present), media representation and popular discourse changed the gender conventions that are found at the core of civic, political, and cultural debates. Mediating Gender in Post-Authoritarian South Korea maps the ways in which popular media and public discourse make the social dynamics of gender visible and open them up for debate and dismantling. In presenting innovative new research on the ways in which popular ideas about gender gain concrete form and political substance through mass mediation, the book's contributors investigate the discursive production of gender in contemporary South Korea through trends, tropes, and thematics, as popular media become the domain in which new gendered subjectivities and relations transpire. The essays in this volume present cases and media objects that span multiple media and platforms, introducing new ways of thinking about gender as a platform and a conceptual infrastructure in the post-authoritarian era.ISBN: 9780472904372Publication Date: 2024-04-29
- Nigerian Women in Cultural, Political and Public Spaces by Mobolanle Sotunsa Intro -- Foreword: Nigerian Women in Cultural, Political and Public Spaces -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- List of Contributors -- Abbreviations -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Chapter 1: Introduction: African Women in Cultural, Political and Public Spaces -- References -- Part I: Nigerian Women in Cultural Spaces -- Chapter 2: Ethno-Cultural Construction of Femininity in Igbo Folklore -- Introduction -- Femininity: A Brief Treatise -- Conceptual and Theoretical Framework: The Conversation -- Methodology -- Anatomisating Selected Igbo Proverbs -- Excavating Naming Practices in Igbo Ethno-Cultural Construct Femininity -- Reinforcing Construction of Ethno-Cultural Femininity in Folksongs and Folktales -- Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 3: Women as the Unsung Breadwinners in Igbo Cosmology in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God -- Introduction -- Cosmology of the Traditional Igbo Society -- Role of Women as Breadwinners -- Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 4: Women as Agents of Change in Some Dance Traditions of Orogun People of Delta State -- Introduction -- Background of the Orogun People -- Women's Dance(s) in Erosefe Festival in Orogun -- Dance I: Eya Udjọ Dance -- Dance II: Ukere Dance -- Dance III: Ighovwo Dance Performance -- Dance IV: Purification Dance/Rites for the Community -- Literature Review -- Critical Context -- Methodology -- Analysis I: Forms of Female Power in the Dances in Erosefe Festival -- Analysis II: Patterns of Change in the Dance Traditions in Erosefe Festival -- Summary of Findings -- Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 5: The Dynamics of Traditional Power Structure: Women, Culture and Leadership in Achebe's Things Fall Apart -- Introduction -- Mimetic Theory -- Woman -- Culture -- Leadership -- Women, Culture and Leadership in Things Fall Apart -- Contemporary Realities Conclusion -- References -- Electronic Newspapers and Online Sources -- Part II: Nigerian Women and Media Engagements -- Chapter 6: Female Engagement and Nollywood in Postmodern Africa -- Introduction -- Female Auteurship and Cinematic Culture in Africa -- Standpoint Theory -- Synopsis of the Video: Wives on Strike -- Analysis -- Conclusion -- References -- Filmography -- Chapter 7: Gender Issues in the Nigerian Public Relations Profession -- Introduction -- The Liberal Feminism Theory -- Women and Leadership -- Factors Affecting Leadership Opportunities for Women in Public Relations -- Methodology -- Key Informants Interviewed (KII) -- Presentation and Discussion of Findings -- Discussion of Major Findings -- Conclusion -- Recommendations -- References -- Chapter 8: Influence of Television Viewing on Eating Disorders Among Female Nigerian Undergraduates of Universities of Jos and Lagos -- Introduction -- Television Influence, Viewing Culture, and Behaviour -- Television Portrayal of the Thin Ideal, Body Image Dissatisfaction, Self-Esteem, and Anorexia -- Information Processing Theory -- The Social Learning Theory -- Methodology -- Research Hypotheses -- Hypothesis One -- Interpretation -- Hypothesis Two -- Interpretation -- Hypothesis Three -- H0: Anorexia is not significantly present among Nigerian female undergraduates as a result of their effort to be like the thin ideal promoted on TV. Chi-Square Test -- Interpretation -- Decision Rule -- Decision -- Conclusion and Recommendations -- References -- Chapter 9: Audience Perception of the Role of Culture and Media in Gender Stereotypes in Nigerian Television Commercials -- Introduction -- Sex, Gender, and Stereotypes -- Advertising and Female Gender Stereotypes -- Culture and Advertising: Influencer of Each Other -- Perception Theory -- Methodology -- Data Presentation and Analysis -- Discussion Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 10: ICT as a Tool for Women's Empowerment -- Introduction -- ICT and the Empowerment of African Women -- Benefits of ICT -- ICT and Women Upgrade -- Mobile Phone as a Tool for Women Empowerment -- Methodology -- Report Analysis -- Demographic Details -- Descriptive Statistics -- Test of the Effect of ICT on Women Empowerment -- Frequency of Use of ICT Tools and Its Effect on Women's Work/Business -- Frequency of Use of ICT Tools and Their Effect on Women's Education/Health -- Conclusion and Recommendations -- References -- Part III: African Women and Legal Frameworks -- Chapter 11: Towards Women's Career Advancements: The Banality of Recognition of Marital Rape in Nigeria -- Introduction -- Methodology -- Arguments in Favour of Marital Rape Exemptions -- The Idea of Inferred Consent -- Marital Solitude -- Protection of the Marriage Institution -- Lack of Evidence -- Impediments to Criminalization of Marital Rape -- Non-consensual Sexual Approaches of the Husband Are Not Classified as a Legal Wrong -- Withdrawal of Consent by the Wife Is Not a Good Ground for Divorce -- Non-recognition of Marital Rape as an Infringement of Fundamental Rights -- Cultural Views -- Religious Beliefs -- Level of Illiteracy Among Nigerian Women -- Lack of Awareness of Women's Health and Reproductive Rights -- Lack of Report to the Appropriate Authorities -- Aftermath of Marital Rape on Women's Career Progression -- The Legal Framework -- The Criminal Code -- The Penal Code -- Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act -- The Armed Forces Act -- Sharia Penal Code Law -- Recommendations -- Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 12: Leadership and Gender Diversity on Corporate Board in Nigeria -- Introduction -- Legal Framework of Companies in Nigeria -- Gender Representation on Corporate Board: Evidence from Literature Relationship Between Gender Diversity and Performance of Companies -- Challenges to Board Gender Diversity -- Corporate Board Gender Diversity in Nigeria -- Board Gender Diversity in Nigeria: Results from Empirical Study -- Survey 1 to Determine the Most Crucial Factor(s) Responsible for Poor Female Representation on Corporate Boards in Nigeria -- Survey Design -- Study Population -- Collection of Data -- Data Analysis -- Data on Board Composition from Companies Listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange -- Sample and Data Collection -- Data Analysis and Findings from Table 12.1 -- Data Analysis and Findings from Table 12.2 -- Findings, Conclusions and Recommendations -- Appendix: Survey Question -- Gender Representation on Corporate Boards in Nigeria -- References -- Chapter 13: Customary Law of Succession in Nigeria: Rethinking the Legal Status of Women -- Introduction -- Succession Under Customary Law -- The Concept of Succession -- The Mode of Distribution of Real Property -- Rules Guiding the Distribution of Intestate Estate in Nigeria -- Customary Succession of Women in Eastern Nigeria -- Customary Law Succession of Women in Western Nigeria -- Customary Law Succession of Women in Northern Nigeria -- Protecting Wives and Females Rights in Intestate Succession -- Safeguarding the Rights of Women/Females in Intestate Estate -- Effective and Efficient Administration of Inheritance -- Limitations to Rights to Make a Will -- Information Gathering and Monitoring from Another Clime -- Reasons for Disinheritance of Widows and Wives the Estates, Titles, and Stool -- Conclusion -- Recommendations -- References -- Chapter 14: The Objectives of Gender Studies in Translation -- Introduction -- The Relevance of Gender Studies in Translation -- Historical Background of Women Participation in Translation -- Reasons for Manipulations in Translation Processes of Alterations and Adaptations in Translation -- Discussions on Practical Translators -- References -- Chapter 15: Social Media Re-victimization and Stigmatization of Sexual Assault Victims: Exploring the Representation and Social Reactions of Sexual Assault Cases in Nigeria -- Introduction -- Hypotheses -- Social Movements, Digital Activism and Information on Sexual Assault -- Methodology -- Unit of Data Analysis -- Findings and Test of Hypotheses -- Decision Rule -- Narrative Analysis of the In-Depth Interview -- Summary of Findings -- Conclusion -- Recommendations -- ReferencesISBN: 9783031405822Publication Date: 2024
- The Palgrave handbook of gender, media and communication in the Middle East and North Africa by edited by Loubna H. Skalli and Nahed Eltantawy The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Media and Communication in the Middle East and North Africa stands as an authoritative and up-to-date resource on the critical debates, research methods and ongoing reflections on how gender and communication intersect with the economic, social, political, and cultural fabrics of the countries in the MENA region. The Handbook comprises thirty chapters written by both established and rising scholars of gender, media, and digital technologies, and will rely on fresh data which seeks to capture the dynamic and complex realities of MENA societies, as well as the tensions and contradictions in the politics of gender and uses of communication technologies. The Handbook is split into six sections: Gender, Identities and Sexualities; The Gender of Politics; Gender and Activism; Gender-Based Violence; Gender and Entrepreneurship; and Gender in Expressive Cultures.ISBN: 9783031119804Publication Date: 2023
- Believability by Sarah Banet-Weiser; Kathryn Claire Higgins The #MeToo movement created more opportunities for women to speak up about sexual assault. But we are also living in a time when "fake news" and "alternative facts" call into question the very nature of truth. This troubling paradox is at the heart of this compelling book. The convergence of #MeToo and the crisis of post-truth is used to explore the experiences of women and people of color whose claims around issues of sexual violence are often held in doubt. Banet-Weiser and Higgins investigate how the gendered and racialized logics of "believability" are defined and contested within media culture, proposing that a mediated "economy of believability" is the context in which public bids for truth about sexual violence are made, negotiated, and authorized today.ISBN: 9781509553822Publication Date: 2023-06-27
- Bollywood's New Woman: liberalization, liberation and contested bodies by Megha Anwer (Editor); Anupama Arora (Editor) Bollywood's New Woman examines Bollywood's construction and presentation of the Indian Woman since the 1990s. The groundbreaking collection illuminates the contexts and contours of this contemporary figure that has been identified in sociological and historical discourses as the "New Woman." On the one hand, this figure is a variant of the fin de siècle phenomenon of the "New Woman" in the United Kingdom and the United States. In the Indian context, the New Woman is a distinct articulation resulting from the nation's tryst with neoliberal reform, consolidation of the middle class, and the ascendency of aggressive Hindu Right politics. ISBN: 9781978814448Publication Date: 2021-06-18
- Fighting Visibility by Jennifer McClearen Ultimate Fighting Championship and the present and future of women's sports Mixed martial arts stars like Amanda Nunes, Zhang Weili, and Ronda Rousey have made female athletes top draws in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Jennifer McClearen charts how the promotion incorporates women into its far-flung media ventures and investigates the complexities surrounding female inclusion. On the one hand, the undeniable popularity of cards headlined by women add much-needed diversity to the sporting landscape. On the other, the UFC leverages an illusion of promoting difference--whether gender, racial, ethnic, or sexual--to grow its empire with an inexpensive and expendable pool of female fighters. McClearen illuminates how the UFC's half-hearted efforts at representation generate profit and cultural cachet while covering up the fact it exploits women of color, lesbians, gender non-conforming women, and others. Thought provoking and timely, Fighting Visibility tells the story of how a sports entertainment phenomenon made difference a part of its brand--and the ways women paid the price for success.ISBN: 9780252052637Publication Date: 2021-03-30
- Media, Indigeneity and Nation in South Asia by Markus Schleiter (Editor); Erik de Maaker (Editor) How do videos, movies and documentaries dedicated to indigenous communities transform the media landscape of South Asia? Based on extensive original research, this book examines how in South Asia popular music videos, activist political clips, movies and documentaries about, by and for indigenous communities take on radically new significances. Media, Indigeneity and Nation in South Asia shows how in the portrayal of indigenous groups by both 'insiders' and 'outsiders' imaginations of indigeneity and nation become increasingly interlinked. Indigenous groups, typically marginal to the nation, are at the same time part of mainstream polities and cultures. Drawing on perspectives from media studies and visual anthropology, this book compares and contrasts the situation in South Asia with indigeneity globally.ISBN: 9780429755620Publication Date: 2019-07-30
Print media
- Liberation in Print: feminist periodicals and social movement identity by Agatha Beins This is the first analysis of periodicals' key role in U.S. feminism's formation as a collective identity and set of political practices in the 1970s. Between 1968 and 1973, more than five hundred different feminist newsletters and newspapers were published in the United States. Agatha Beins shows that the repetition of certain ideas in these periodicals--ideas about gender, race, solidarity, and politics--solidified their centrality to feminism. Beins focuses on five periodicals of that era, comprising almost three hundred different issues: Distaff (New Orleans, Louisiana); Valley Women's Center Newsletter (Northampton, Massachusetts); Female Liberation Newsletter (Cambridge, Massachusetts); Ain't I a Woman? (Iowa City, Iowa); and L.A. Women's Liberation Newsletter, later published as Sister (Los Angeles, California). Together they represent a wide geographic range, including some understudied sites of feminism. Beins examines the discourse of sisterhood, images of women of color, feminist publishing practices, and the production of feminist spaces to demonstrate how repetition shaped dominant themes of feminism's collective identity. Beins also illustrates how local context affected the manifestation of ideas or political values, revealing the complexity and diversity within feminism. With much to say about the study of social movements in general, Liberation in Print shows feminism to be a dynamic and constantly emerging identity that has grown, in part, out of a tension between ideological coherence and diversity. Beins's investigation of repetition offers an innovative approach to analyzing collective identity formation, and her book points to the significance of print culture in activist organizing.ISBN: 9780820349534Publication Date: 2017-05-30
Queer representation
- Trans Representations in Contemporary, Popular Cinema by Niall Richardson; Frances Smith This book analyses how contemporary genre cinema represents trans-identified characters. Informed by key debates within transfeminism, queer theory, contemporary trans studies - and engaging with the concerns voiced by gender critical feminism - this culturally oriented book critiques the representation of trans characters in a range of cinematic genres, including the musical, period costume drama, the road movie, melodrama, coming-of-age stories, and romances. The case studies address the ways in which trans identifications have been coded within the narrative and stylistic expectations of the genres. Are genre films successful in affirming trans identifications or do they reinforce trans stereotypes and anti-trans discourses? This is a timely and accessible book, which addresses Anglophonic, European and Latin American cinemas, and is ideal for students studying courses in Film Studies, Media Studies, Cultural Studies or Gender Studies.ISBN: 9781003039426Publication Date: 2022-08-23
- Lesbians on Television: new queer visibility & the lesbian normal by Kate Mcnicholas-Smith; Kate McNicholas Smith The twenty-first century has seen LGBTQ+ rights emerge at the forefront of public discourse and national politics in ways that would once have been hard to imagine. In Lesbians on Television, Kate McNicholas Smith maps concurrent contemporary shifts in lesbian visibility within popular media, focusing on the small screens of Europe and North America. Central to these shifts has been a re-imagining of queer lives--or a "new queer visibility"--as LGBTQ+ characters have become increasingly visible within popular culture. Kate McNicholas Smith explores this increased visibility through the lens of television, and in doing so, she identifies a "new lesbian normal"--a normalization of lesbian subjects that both helps and hinders those it represents. Structured around five central case studies of popular British and American television shows featuring lesbian, bisexual, and queer women characters--The L Word, Skins, Glee, Coronation Street, and The Fosters--the book develops a detailed analysis of the shaping of a new "lesbian normal" through representations of LGBTQ+ figures, and examines their televisual representation and reception. Presenting critical queer and feminist theory alongside empirical research that includes interviews and multi-platform media analyses, McNicholas Smith works to untangle the social, political, and cultural implications of new visibility in a period of significant social change in the LGBTQ+ experience.ISBN: 9781789382808Publication Date: 2020-11-29
- Killing off the Lesbians by Liz Millward; Janice G. Dodd; Irene Fubara-Manuel Spoiler Alert: the lesbian character always dies. That is what seems to happen in television shows and films from all around the world. But is it true and is it something new? And does it even matter when women who love women can be found right across the media landscape? Looking at the fates of characters over decades, this wide-ranging and lively book argues that killing off the lesbian--even if she only appears via the subtext--is nothing new. It is a form of symbolic annihilation that has an impact in real life. Industry surveys and scholarly studies show that it is now easier for actors to come out and be role models. When more women are working behind the scenes the quality of what appears on-screen also becomes more diverse, but the storylines do not necessarily change. From the Xenaverse to GLAAD to the Lexa Pledge, fans have demanded better from the entertainment industry. As their fan fiction migrates from the computer screen to the printed page, they reanimate the dead and insist on happy endings.ISBN: 9781476668161Publication Date: 2017-05-30
- Feminist Perspectives on Orange Is the New Black by April Kalogeropoulos Householder (Editor); Adrienne Trier-Bieniek (Editor) Since its 2013 premiere, Orange Is the New Black has become Netflix's most watched series, garnering critical praise and numerous awards and advancing the cultural phenomenon of binge-watching. Academic conferences now routinely feature panels discussing the show, and the book on which it is based is popular course material at many universities. Yet little work has been published on OINTB. The series has sparked debate: does it celebrate diversity or is it told from the perspective of white privilege, with characters embodying some of the most racist and sexist stereotypes in television history? This collection of new essays is the first to analyze the show's multiple layers of meaning. Examining Orange Is the New Black from a number of feminist perspectives, the contributors cover topics such as gender, race, class, sexuality, transgenderism, mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex, disability, and sexual assault.ISBN: 9781476663920Publication Date: 2016-07-30
- Queer media images : LGBT perspectives by Theresa Carilli (Editor), et al. Queer Media Images: LGBT Perspectives presents fifteen chapters that address how the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered communities are depicted in the media. This collection focuses on how the LGBT community has been silenced or given voice through the media. Through a study of queer media images, this book scrutinizes LGBT media representations and how these representations contribute to a dialogue about civil rights for this marginalized community. While the communication discipline has been open to the LGBT community, there has been an absence of published research and a marginalizing or tokenizing of the queer voice. Through a study of media representations, this unique collection provides a snapshot into the issues surrounding LGBT identity during a time when the Defense of Marriage Act is called into question and explores what it means to study images through a queer lens.ISBN: 9781498516105Publication Date: 2015-03-24
- Televising Queer Women: a reader by Rebecca Beirne (Editor) This timely collection provides high-quality interdisciplinary essays which address lesbian and bisexual representation in popular television shows such as The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, E.R., Queer as Folk, Sex and the City, The L Word and The O.C.ISBN: 9780230600805Publication Date: 2008-05-12
Gaming
- Conducting informed research on online communities : insights from studying cyber-aggression toward women by Arvin Jagayat In our case study, we chronicle our experiences recruiting participants from online video gaming communities to study cyber-aggression toward women. Our online survey was complicated by the fact that we were seeking to study a highly contentious and politically charged topic in a community with a history of academic research weaponized against them. Further complicating our research was the possibility that we might sample from aggressive subcommunities that, if antagonized, could engage in cyber-aggression toward us. We detail how our empathy and understanding first approach helped inform our research design, our ability to recruit from gaming communities, and safeguards from potential risks associated with sampling aggressive individuals. We also discuss how we reacted and how the empathy and understanding approach carried through to guide our decision-making after our study unexpectedly went viral to thousands and started circulating in those aggressive subcommunities.ISBN: 9781529602975Publication Date: 2022
- Gaming sexism : gender and identity in the era of casual video games by Amanda C. Cote When the Nintendo Wii was released in 2006, it ushered forward a new era of casual gaming in which video games appealed to not just the stereotypical hardcore male gamer, but also to a much broader, more diverse audience. However, the GamerGate controversy six years later, and other similar public incidents since, laid bare the internalized misogyny and gender stereotypes in the gaming community. Today, even as women make up nearly half of all gamers, sexist assumptions about the what and how of women's gaming are more actively enforced. Amanda C. Cote explores the video game industry and its players to explain this contradiction, how it affects female gamers, and what it means in terms of power and gender equality.Publication Date: 2021
- Gamer Trouble by Amanda Phillips Complicating perspectives on diversity in video games Gamers have been troublemakers as long as games have existed. As our popular understanding of "gamer" shifts beyond its historical construction as a white, straight, adolescent, cisgender male, the troubles that emerge both confirm and challenge our understanding of identity politics. In Gamer Trouble, Amanda Phillips excavates the turbulent relationships between surface and depth in contemporary gaming culture, taking readers under the hood of the mechanisms of video games in order to understand the ways that difference gets baked into its technological, ludic, ideological, and social systems. By centering the insights of queer and women of color feminisms in readings of online harassment campaigns, industry animation practices, and popular video games like Portal and Mass Effect, Phillips adds essential analytical tools to our conversations about video games. She embraces the trouble that attends disciplinary crossroads, linking the violent hate speech of trolls and the representational practices marginalizing people of color, women, and queers in entertainment media to the dehumanizing logic undergirding computation and the optimization strategies of gameplay. From the microcosmic level of electricity and flicks of a thumb to the grand stages of identity politics and global capitalism, wherever gamers find themselves, gamer trouble follows. As reinvigorated forms of racism, sexism, and homophobia thrive in games and gaming communities, Phillips follows the lead of those who have been making good trouble all along, agitating for a better world.ISBN: 9781479870103Publication Date: 2020-04-21
- Video games and American culture : how ideology influences virtual worlds by Aaron A. Toscano Digital media are immersive technologies reflecting behaviors, attitudes, and values. The engrossing, entertaining virtual worlds video games provide are important sites for 21st century research. This book moves beyond assertions that video games cause violence by analyzing the culture that produces such material. While some popular media reinforce the idea that video games lead to violence, this book uses a cultural studies lens to reveal a more complex situation. Video games do not lead to violence, sexism, and chauvinism. Rather, Toscano argues, a violent, sexist, chauvinistic culture reproduces texts that reflect these values. Although video games have a worldwide audience, this book focuses on American culture and how this multi-billion dollar industry entertains us in our leisure time (and sometimes at work), bringing us into virtual environments where we have fun learning, fighting, discovering, and acquiring bragging rights. When politicians and moral crusaders push agendas that claim video games cause a range of social ills from obesity to mass shooting, these perspectives fail to recognize that video games reproduce hegemonic American values. This book, in contrast, focuses on what these highly entertaining cultural products tell us about who we are.ISBN: 9781793601308Publication Date: 2019-12-12
- Feminism in Play by Kishonna L. Gray (Editor); Gerald Voorhees (Editor); Emma Vossen (Editor) Feminism in Play focuses on women as they are depicted in video games, as participants in games culture, and as contributors to the games industry. This volume showcases women's resistance to the norms of games culture, as well as women's play and creative practices both in and around the games industry. Contributors analyze the interconnections between games and the broader societal and structural issues impeding the successful inclusion of women in games and games culture. In offering this framework, this volume provides a platform to the silenced and marginalized, offering counter-narratives to the post-racial and post-gendered fantasies that so often obscure the violent context of production and consumption of games culture.ISBN: 9783319905389Publication Date: 2018-10-10
- Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: new perspectives on gender and gaming by Yasmin B. Kafai (Editor); Jennifer Y. Sun (Editor); Jill Denner (Editor); Carrie Heeter (Editor); Henry Jenkins Girls and women as game players and game designers in the new digital landscape of massively multiplayer online games, "second lives," "modding," serious games, and casual games. Ten years after the groundbreaking From Barbie to Mortal Kombat highlighted the ways gender stereotyping and related social and economic issues permeate digital game play, the number of women and girl gamers has risen considerably. Despite this, gender disparities remain in gaming. Women may be warriors in World of Warcraft, but they are also scantily clad "booth babes" whose sex appeal is used to promote games at trade shows. Player-generated content has revolutionized gaming, but few games marketed to girls allow "modding" (game modifications made by players). Gender equity, the contributors to Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat argue, requires more than increasing the overall numbers of female players. Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat brings together new media theorists, game designers, educators, psychologists, and industry professionals, including some of the contributors to the earlier volume, to look at how gender intersects with the broader contexts of digital games today: gaming, game industry and design, and serious games. The contributors discuss the rise of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) and the experience of girl and women players in gaming communities; the still male-dominated gaming industry and the need for different perspectives in game design; and gender concerns related to emerging serious games (games meant not only to entertain but also to educate, persuade, or change behavior). In today's game-packed digital landscape, there is an even greater need for games that offer motivating, challenging, and enriching contexts for play to a more diverse population of players. Contributors Cornelia Brunner, Shannon Campe, Justine Cassell, Mia Consalvo, Jill Denner, Mary Flanagan, Janine Fron, Tracy Fullerton, Elisabeth Hayes, Carrie Heeter, Kristin Hughes, Mimi Ito, Henry Jenkins III, Yasmin B. Kafai, Caitlin Kelleher, Brenda Laurel, Nicole Lazzaro, Holin Lin, Jacki Morie, Helen Nissenbaum, Celia Pearce, Caroline Pelletier, Jennifer Y. Sun, T. L. Taylor, Brian Winn, Nick YeeInterviews with Nichol Bradford, Brenda Braithwaite, Megan Gaiser, Sheri Graner Ray, Morgan RomineISBN: 9780262113199Publication Date: 2008-09-19
Digital Media
- Black Girl Autopoetics by Ashleigh Greene Wade In Black Girl Autopoetics Ashleigh Greene Wade explores how Black girls create representations of themselves in digital culture with the speed and flexibility enabled by smartphones. She analyzes the double bind Black girls face when creating content online: on one hand, their online activity makes them hypervisible, putting them at risk for cyberbullying, harassment, and other forms of violence; on the other hand, Black girls are rarely given credit for their digital inventiveness, rendering them invisible. Wade maps Black girls' everyday digital practices, showing what their digital content reveals about their everyday experiences and how their digital production contributes to a broader archive of Black life. She coins the term Black girl autopoetics to describe how Black girls' self-making creatively reinvents cultural products, spaces, and discourse in digital space. Using ethnographic research into the digital cultural production of adolescent Black girls throughout the United States, Wade draws a complex picture of how Black girls navigate contemporary reality, urging us to listen to Black girls' experience and learn from their techniques of survival.ISBN: 9781478025603Publication Date: 2024-02-27
- Women Vloggers, Cultures & Nature : Narrativising Rural Lifescape by Alberta Natasia Adji This book explores the nature-inspired and place-based vlogging activities of five young women who have become global icons in the last five years, and whose digital projects are a form of ‘nature life writing’ in the Anthropocene. Li Ziqi, Dianxi Xiaoge, Jonna Jinton, Annabel Margaret and Paola Merrill draw on their culture and use technological equipment and social media (especially YouTube) to build dynamic narratives about living in the countryside. Through their online platform they show unique, picturesque footage of their daily routines and rural environments, and present the ways in which they nurture connections between people in the community and animals and landscapes. The study shows how, paradoxically, their digital life writing projects attempt to resist the attention economy but at the same time use strategies to sustain it. Through the various lenses of ecobiography, cultural ecology, digital archiving, ecospirituality, phytography, and ethological poetics, this book also foregrounds the significance of plant life and landscapes – they are reminders of how human lives are inextricably entangled with traditional values and the natural world. Alberta Natasia Adji is a contemporary author and researcher in women’s life narratives. She completed her PhD on auto/biographical fiction at Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia, in 2023. Her autobiographical project focuses on family history of Chinese Indonesians from 1959 to 2014. Adji was awarded the 2023 School of Arts and Humanities Research Medal by ECU for the quality of her doctoral research thesis. Before coming to Australia, she has published two novels in Indonesian language, Youth Adagio (2013) and Dante: The Faery and the Wizard (2014). Since then, she has continued publishing her short fiction works in New Writing, Meniscus, and TEXT as well as refereed articles in academic journals.ISBN: 9783031369544Publication Date: 2024
- African women in digital spaces : redefining social movements on the continent and in the diaspora by edited by Msia Kibona Clark and Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed "From Tamale to Paris, Hong Kong to Texas and back to Ouagadougou, this collection of scholarly chapters, poetry and personal essays theorizes the lives of African women and people of marginalized genders on the continent and the diaspora. The book is an important intervention in conversations on social movements and their convergence with digital media and other praxis tools. The contributors bring a refreshing perspective to discourses on African feminists' agency and how this manifests in their organizing in the physical world and in the digital public sphere. The volume demonstrates the relationships between the struggles of African feminists on the continent and the diaspora charting pathways for African scholars to build coalitions and work toward collective liberation."ISBN: 9789987753819Publication Date: 2023
- Digital Femininities by Frankie Rogan Digital Femininities: The Gendered Construction of Cultural and Political Identities Online examines the role of new media technologies in the production of girls' cultural and political identities. The book argues that the varied and complex spaces which make up our 'social media' should be conceptualised as important terrains upon which neoliberal and postfeminist subjectivities can be both reproduced and subverted. In doing so, the book explores many key issues underpinning current debates around gender politics and digital media, including gendered spatial politics, visibility, surveillance and regulation, beauty politics, and civic and political engagement and activism. Over the last decade, the position of girls and young women within the digital landscape of social media has been a topic of much debate. On the one hand, girls' social media practices are presented as a key site of concern, wherein new digital technologies are said to have produced an intensification of individualised, neoliberal and postfeminist identities. Conversely, others have championed access to social media for young people as a potentially useful political tool, enabling previously marginalised political subjects (such as girls) to access and participate within new and exciting political cultures. Locating itself at the intersection of these two approaches, this book offers a fresh contribution to these debates. Based upon the findings from focus groups with girls and young women aged between 12 and 18 in England, the book offers an in-depth analysis of the digital cultures that emerged from the study. This timely book will be essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary femininity and feminism and the role of digital media in the production of cultural, political and gendered identities.ISBN: 9780429356117Publication Date: 2022-07-01
- Postfeminism, Postrace and Digital Politics in Asian American Food Blogs by Tisha Dejmanee This book examines how Asian American women bloggers challenge dominant race and gender discourses through the practice of food blogging. Asian American food blogs, which situate recipes and food photography within the personal narratives and domestic spaces of Asian American women, offer unique insights into the ways that hegemonic race and gender discourses are negotiated in quotidian life. The genre's focus on food provides a particularly rich backdrop for this study as it necessarily implicates family histories, gendered labour, domestic spaces, and the power dynamics of consumption. These intimate digital texts therefore provide unique insights into the ways that postfeminist and postrace discourses are encountered in the individual's mundane experiences. The author engages a critical cultural analysis of food blogs narratives, images, communities, and platforms expressions of post-race and feminism discourses are constrained by the commercial logics of this digital culture. The author argues that while Asian American food blogs rarely present a sustained challenge to hegemonic identity representation, the processes of reproduction and rupture that define this blogosphere consistently reveal the collective desire to push back against the limits of 'post'-identities. This is a unique and fascinating study which is ideal reading for students and scholars of gender studies, media studies, cultural studies and sociology.ISBN: 9781000822618Publication Date: 2022-12-12