Gender and Seriality
Practices and Politics of Contemporary US Television
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Edinburgh University Press
Published:16th Feb '21
Should be back in stock very soon
The notion of seriality and serial identity performance runs as a strong undercurrent through much of the fields of gender studies, feminist theory and queer studies, although the explicit analysis of a serial enactment of gender is surprisingly rare. Whereas media studies and cultural studies-based seriality scholarship can often overlook gender as an ongoing process, this book defines gender as a serial and discursively produced, intersectional entanglement of different practices and agencies. It argues that serial storytelling offers such complex negotiations of identity that it is never adequate to consider the 'results' of televisual gender performances as separate from the processes that produce them. As such, gender performances are not restricted to individual television programmes themselves, but are also located in official paratexts, such as making-of documentaries, interviews with writers and actors, as well as in cultural sites like online viewer discussions, recaps and fan fiction. With case studies of series such as Girls, How to Get Away With Murder and The Walking Dead, this book seeks to understand how gender as a practice is generated by television narratives in the overlapping of text, reception and production, and explores which viewer practices these narratives seek to trigger and draw on in the process.
In this timely, important, intervention in gender and media studies, Maria Sulimma focuses on television's re-positioning in recent years as a site of great gender complexity and virtuosic seriality. She works from a very full definition of the medium that encompasses DVD extras, interviews, recaps and fan discourse. * Diane Negra, University College Dublin *
Gender and Seriality is a provocative text, offering an interdisciplinary, intersectional methodology that deepens both the disciplines of gender studies and media studies through sophisticated analyses of seriality. Its accessible language, cogent formulations, and stimulating proposals will make excellent reading for anyone interested in gender and media. -- Briand Gentry * Global Storytelling *
This is a densely argued book, weaving a complex tapestry of concepts and metaphorical categories which Sulimma uses to explore ‘the processes by which serial television develops gendered identities and how these processes rely on different modes of audience feedback’ (p. 217). It is beautifully written and all three case studies are satisfyingly detailed and nuanced. -- Sofia Bull * Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies *
[Offers a] compelling study of the social impact of seriality and serves as a starting point to inspire further scholarship in the multidisciplinary study of serial television. -- Briand Gentry * Global Storytelling *
ISBN: 9781474473958
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 556g
264 pages