Television Studies

Branded Women in U.S. Television examines how The Real Housewives of New York City, Martha Stewart, and other female entrepreneurs create branded televised versions of the iconic U.S. housewife. Using their television presence to establish and promote their own product lines, including jewelry, cookware, clothing, and skincare, they become the primary physical representations of these brands.

This work presents more than 400 A to Z entries on the individuals, programs, media innovations, and broad topics that tell the story of women's involvement both in front of and behind the television camera. From thought-provoking trends to entertaining trivia, this delightfully illustrated encyclopedia covers it all: Gracie Allen, Ally McBeal, Asian women, black sitcoms, cable TV, the Emmys, tabloid and talk shows, older women on television, Penny Marshall, Our Miss Brooks, Jane Pauley, soap operas, Jamie Tarses, That Girl, Oprah Winfrey, and more. ...

A timely intervention into debates on the representation of feminist and feminine identities in contemporary visual culture.

How forty-one women--including Dorothy Parker, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Lena Horne--were forced out of American television and radio in the 1950s "Red Scare." At the dawn of the Cold War era, forty-one women working in American radio and television were placed on a media blacklist and forced from their industry. The ostensible reason: so-called Communist influence. But in truth these women--among them Dorothy Parker, Lena Horne, and Gypsy Rose Lee--were, by nature of their diversity and ambition, a threat to the traditional portrayal of the American family on the airwaves. ...

Contested Images: Women of Color in Popular Culture is a collection of 17 essays that analyze representations in popular culture of African American, Asian American, Latina, and Native American women. The anthology is divided into four parts: film images, beauty images, music, and television. ...

At a time when television offered limited opportunities for women, Donna Reed was an Oscar-winning Hollywood actress who became both producer (though largely uncredited) and star of her own television show. Distinct from the patriarchal family sitcoms of the era, The Donna Reed Show's storylines focused on the mother instead of the father, and its production brought a cinematic aesthetic to television situation comedy.

This book explores the role film and television stardom has played in establishing, reinforcing, and challenging popular ethnic notions of Latina/os in the United States since the silent film era of the 1920s. In addition to documenting the importance of Latina and Latino stars to American film and television history, Mary C. Beltrán focuses on key moments in the construction of "Hollywood Latinidad" by analyzing the public images of these stars as promoted by Hollywood film studios, television networks, producers, and the performers themselves. ...

Dow discusses a wide variety of television programming and provides specific case studies of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, One Day at a Time, Designing Women, Murphy Brown, and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. ...

While much research into television has been historical, textual, or empirical, this volume approaches the topic from a sociocultural and feminist perspective, to address important questions from the viewpoint of the audience as well as from that of the industry. The contributors examine the ways in which the television industry seeks to deliver a female audience to its advertisers while inserting itself into women's lives, both at home and in the marketplace - hence the concept of a private screening in which the outside media world is brought into the personal space. ...

Most of the bright and talented actresses who made America laugh in the 1950s are off the air today, but their pioneering Hollywood careers irrevocably changed the face of television comedy. These smart and sassy women successfully negotiated the hazards of the male-dominated workplace with class and humor, and the work they did in the 1950s is inventive still by today's standards. Unable to fall back on strong language, shock value, or racial and sexual epithets, the female sitcom stars of the 1950s entertained with pure talent and screen savvy. ...

The sexual politics of television culture is the territory covered by this ground-breaking book - the first to demonstrate the ways in which third wave feminist television studies approaches and illuminates mainstream TV. Leading voices in third wave feminism focus on innovative US television shows, including The Sopranos, Oz, Six Feet Under, The L Word and the reality-TV show The Bachelor to take a closer look at the contradictions and reciprocities between feminism and television, engaging as they go in theoretical and critical conversations about media culture, third wave feminism, feminist spectatorship, the sex wars, and the politics of visual pleasure. ...

Women's inclinations to identify with television characters varies with their assessment of the realism of these characters and their social world.

Camera Obscura provides a forum for scholarship and debate on feminism, culture, and media studies.

MLA International Bibliography indexes journal articles, books and dissertations. Coverage includes literature, language and linguistics, folklore, literary theory & criticism, dramatic arts, as well as the historical aspects of printing and publishing.

Use this index to find articles about this topic.

This resource includes references from a variety of Women's Studies bibliographic databases.