Disability, Obesity and Ageing

Debbie Rodan is Senior Lecturer of Media and Cultural Studies at Edith Cowan University, Australia. She has published on televisual representations, media activist forums and political blogging, and is the author of Identity and Justice: Conflicts, Contradictions and Contingencies. Katie Ellis is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University, Australia. She has published widely on disability and media, and is the author of Disabling Diversity, and co-author of Disability and New Media and Disability and the Media. Pia Lebeck tutors in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Murdoch University, Australia.

’This is one of the most original, engaged and compelling discussions of the contemporary landscape of disability I have read. Rodan, Ellis and Lebeck deftly fold diverse media and cultural contexts together in order to offer an astute, discerning picture of the way popular culture creates particular bodies as other. A brilliant and truly global piece of scholarship, this book is a must for those interested in disability, obesity, ageing, and the mediatization of politics of becoming "other".' Anna Hickey-Moody, University of Sydney, Australia ’This thoughtful, accessible book engages with television’s constructions of what it is to live with disability, obesity and/or an ageing body, and argues that the meanings of these categories are subject to constant negotiation. Resistance is not futile!’ Lelia Green, Edith Cowan University, Australia

• Part I Television as a Social Experience; Chapter 1 Introduction: Renegotiating Disability, Obesity and Ageing; Chapter 2 Tacit Knowledge: Cultural Representations of Disability, Obesity and Ageing; Chapter 3 A Marketplace of Ideas: Television as a Social Experience; Chapter 4 Audience Activity: Identification, Disidentification and Online Activity; Part II Identifications; Chapter 5 Disability Drama; Chapter 6 Obesity Makeover: Rejecting the Obese Body; Chapter 7 Ageing Transformations: Embracing the ‘Young–Old’ Body; Chapter 8 Conclusion: Beyond the Water-Cooler – Reinforcing and Contesting the Symbolic Annihilation of Disability, Obesity and Ageing;