Summary

This book is the first volume in a major new series, Oxford Television Studies and provides a comprehensive anthology on all the major issues relating to feminism and the production and reception of television. The feminist critical engagement with television has transformed the understanding of the medium. The initial focus on the domestic and explorations of the feminine has had to keep pace with an increasingly complex relationship between television programming, society, and women as producers and audience, contemporary theory, and the late twentieth-century society. Feminist Television Criticism explores that complexity. Most of the pieces selected deal with genres and topics that have been the dominant subjects of feminist television analysis-soaps mini-series, serials, sitcoms, housewives, "new women" heterosexual and lesbian romances, female audiences, and domesticity. Throughout, the focus is on feminist genres and how feminist critical understanding has developed in a historical perspective. Feminist Television Criticism will be an important teaching and study resource for all students and scholars working in the field of television studies, media studies, gender studies, and cultural studies.