Synopses & Reviews
The Feminist, the Housewife, and the Soap Opera traces the history of the feminist engagement with soap opera using a wide range of sources from programme publicity to interviews with key scholars. The book reveals that feminist scholarship on soap opera was a significant site of which the identity 'feminist intellectual' was produced in dialogue with her imagined other, the soap opera watching housewife. The book integrates personal autobiographical accounts within a broader history which traces both the move from 'women's liberation' to 'Feminism', and the acceptance of soap opera as a serious object of study.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [225]-245) and index.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part 1. Mapping the Fields
Women's genres and female agency
Part 2. Early Work on Soap Opera: "Worrying Responsibility"
The Housewife in the 1940s Mass Communication Research: Arnheim, Kaufman, and Herzog
Feminists Taking Soap Opera Seriously: The Work of Carol Lopate, Michele Mattelart, and Tania Modleski
Fantasies of the Housewife: The Case of Crossroads
Part 3. Talking Soap Opera
Autobiography and Ethnography
'I don't think we thought about it as studying soap opera': Christine Geraghty
'What about the rest of the audience?' Dorothy Hobson
'Slightly guilty pleasures': Terry Lovell
'The pleasure of a programme like this is not something simple': Ien Ang
'A sense of trying to valorise soap opera as women's TV': Ellen Seiter
Commonalties: Writing Across the Interviews
The Feminist, the Housewife, and the Soap Opera
Appendix
Bibliography