Gender and Seriality

Practices and Politics of Contemporary US Television

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by Maria Sulimma

Type: Studies
Subject: Genre > TV Series
Keywords: TV Series, sociology, gender
Publishing date: 2021
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Collection: Screen Serialities
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 264 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-4744-7395-8

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Book Presentation:
Offers the first book-length study to commit to gender and television as driven by seriality

• Provides an introduction to seriality in both gender studies and cultural/media studies
• Identifies shortcomings of seriality studies and gender studies and suggests remedies
• Traces a massive body of material, 3 different shows with a combined total of 237 episodes over 18 seasons, as well as extensive research on various paratexts and viewer practices
• Develops methods and terminology to analyze gender performances as ongoing and interconnected with practices of reception and production
• Allows for an understanding of serial television’s complex, ambiguous commercial cooption of cultural-political discourses, especially activism and thought
• Considers serial, ongoing television authorship as unfolding alongside a television show
• Examines the changed conditions and implications of television writing (journalistic and academic) for current television storytelling
• Approaches second-screen/social media viewing, specifically racialized practices of online humor and politicization on Twitter

The notion of seriality and serial identity performance runs as a strong undercurrent through much of the fields of feminist theory, gender studies and queer studies. Defining gender as a serial and discursively produced entanglement of different practices and agencies, this book argues that serial storytelling can offer such complex negotiations of identity that the ‘results’ of televisual gender performances are rarely 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, and 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 the viewer practices that these narratives seek to trigger and draw on in the process.

About the Author:
Maria Sulimma is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Anglophone Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Press Reviews:
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

Sulimma convincingly argues that each show encourages different forms of audience engagement and fan practices through distinct uses of seriality and gendered character portrayals.– Sofia Bull, Critical Studies in Television

See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press

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