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.

"Highly recommended for graduate studies and research in feminist, television, and cultural studies."--Choice

PART I: Housewives, Heroines, Feminists

1. Everyday Life, Michelle Mattelart

2. The Search for Tomorrow in Today's Soap Operas, Tania Modleski

3. Affirmation and Denial: Construction of Feminity on Indian Television (excerpts), Prabha Krishnan and Anita Digh

4. Roseanne: Unruly Woman as Domestic Goddess, Kathleen Rowe

5. L.A. Law and Prime-Time Feminism, Judith Mayne

6. Empowering Women? The Oprah Winfrey Show, Corrine Squire

7. Identity in Feminist Television Criticism, Charlotte Brunsdon

8. New Traditionalism and Post-Feminism: TV Does the Home, Elspeth Probyn

PART TWO: Audiences and Reception Contexts

9. Women's Genres, Annette Kuhn

10. Melodramatic Identifications: Television Fiction and Women's Fantasy, Ien Ang

11. Black Feminism and Media Criticism: The Women of Brewster Place, Jacqeline Bobo and Ellen Seiter

12. In Love with Inspecter Morse, Lyn Thomas

13. Fruitful Investigations: The Case of the Successful Lesbian Text, Hilary Hinds

14. the Suburban Home Companion: Television and the Neighborhood Ideal in Postwar America, Lynn Spigel

15. Behind Closed Doors: Video Recorders in the Home, Ann Gray

PART THREE: Private Bodies, Public Figures

16. Television Tales and a Woman's Rage: A Nationalist Recasting of Draupidi's Disrobing, Purnima Mankekar

17. Abortion Discourse and 1970s Television Documentary, Julie D'Acci

18. The Ideology of Freshness in Feminine Hygiene Commericials, Kate Kane

19. Never Trust a Big Butt and a Smile, Tricia Rose

20. The Gorgeous Lesbian in L.A. Law: The Present Absence?, Rosanne Kennedy

21. Reproducing Reality: Murphy Brown and Illegitimate Politics, Rebecca Walkowitz

22. Representation Wars: Malaysia, Embassy, and Australia's Corps Diplomatique, Suvendrini Perera