The Feminist, the Housewife, and the Soap Opera

by Brunsdon, Charlotte

• ISBN13: 9780198159803
• ISBN10: 0198159803
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-04-06
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

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 soap opera scholars. The book reveals that feminist scholarship on soap opera was a significant site ofwhich 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 ofsoap opera as a serious object of study.

Author Biography

Charlotte Brunsdon teaches in the Department of Film and Television Studies, University of Warwick.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	xii
Introduction	1	(16)
Part I: Mapping the Fields	17	(20)
Women's Genres and Female Agency	19	(18)
Part II: Early Work on Soap Opera: `Worrying Responsibly'	37	(46)
Introduction to Part II	39	(4)
The Housewife in 1940s Mass Communication Research: Arnheim, Kaufman, and Herzog	43	(9)
Feminists Taking Soap Opera Seriously: The Work of Carol Lopate, Michele Mattelart, and Tania Modleski	52	(14)
Fantasies of the Housewife: The Case of Crossroads	66	(17)
Part III: Talking Soap Opera	83	(136)
Autobiography and Ethnography	85	(14)
`I Don't Think We Thought about It as Studying Soap Operas': Christine Geraghty	99	(13)
`What about the Rest of the Audience?': Dorothy Hobson	112	(19)
`Slightly Guilty Pleasures': Terry Lovell	131	(16)
`The Pleasure of a Programme Like This Is Not Something Simple': len Ang	147	(18)
`A Sense of Trying to Valorize Soap Opera as Women's TV': Ellen Seiter	165	(18)
Commonalities: Writing Across the Interviews	183	(28)
The Feminist, the Housewife, and the Soap Opera	211	(8)
Appendix: Example of Interview Transcription	219	(6)
Bibliography	225	(22)
Index	247