Helen Wood – författare

This book interrogates the hyper-visibility and stubborn endurance of the wedding spectacle across media and culture in the current climate.

The wide-ranging chapters consider why the symbolic power of weddings is intensifying at a time when marriage as an institution appears to be in decline – and they offer new insights into the shifting and complex gender politics of contemporary culture. The collection is a feminist project but does not straight-forwardly renounce the wedding spectacle. Rather, the diverse contributions offer close analyses of the myriad forms and practices of the wedding spectacle, from reality television and cinematic film to wedding videography and bridal boutiques. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, the chapters illuminate the paradoxes, contradictions, disappointments, cruelties and pleasures that are intimately bound up with the wedding spectacle.

Written by leading and emerging feminist scholars, the chapters range across different national and cultural contexts to explore how the gender politics of weddings are changing and adapting to a new cultural and social landscape. This in-depth analysis of the wedding spectacle will appeal to academics and researchers in the fields of gender and mass media, cultural studies, feminist studies, and intercultural communication.

This book interrogates the hyper-visibility and stubborn endurance of the wedding spectacle across media and culture in the current climate.

The wide-ranging chapters consider why the symbolic power of weddings is intensifying at a time when marriage as an institution appears to be in decline – and they offer new insights into the shifting and complex gender politics of contemporary culture. The collection is a feminist project but does not straight-forwardly renounce the wedding spectacle. Rather, the diverse contributions offer close analyses of the myriad forms and practices of the wedding spectacle, from reality television and cinematic film to wedding videography and bridal boutiques. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, the chapters illuminate the paradoxes, contradictions, disappointments, cruelties and pleasures that are intimately bound up with the wedding spectacle.

Written by leading and emerging feminist scholars, the chapters range across different national and cultural contexts to explore how the gender politics of weddings are changing and adapting to a new cultural and social landscape. This in-depth analysis of the wedding spectacle will appeal to academics and researchers in the fields of gender and mass media, cultural studies, feminist studies, and intercultural communication.

This accessible guide through audience studies’ histories outlines a contemporary Cultural Studies approach to audiences for the digital age.

This book is not a survey of all existing audience research. Instead, its chapters survey parts of the field in order to draw some ‘through-lines’ from older traditions to contemporary debates, giving students a ‘way in’ to thinking about the current landscape from an ‘audience-sensitive’ perspective. In order to do this, the book utilises a series of verbs to organise and cut a path through audience research and register its ongoing relevance today. These verbs are: audience, anchor, mean, feel and work. The list is not exhaustive and the reader is invited to think about what verbs they would add or change throughout the book. Audience suggests renewing the importance of ‘form’ as a cultural process and in ‘circling-back’ to Cultural Studies’ ‘circuit of culture’, it proposes a modified framework for ‘the digital circuit’. Each chapter opens with a particular scenario for the reader to reflect upon and asks a specific question to help orient the account of research that is to come, especially for those new to Media and Cultural Studies and to audience studies.

Written in an engaging and accessible style, this book is ideal for both students and researchers of Media and Cultural Studies.

This accessible guide through audience studies’ histories outlines a contemporary Cultural Studies approach to audiences for the digital age.

This book is not a survey of all existing audience research. Instead, its chapters survey parts of the field in order to draw some ‘through-lines’ from older traditions to contemporary debates, giving students a ‘way in’ to thinking about the current landscape from an ‘audience-sensitive’ perspective. In order to do this, the book utilises a series of verbs to organise and cut a path through audience research and register its ongoing relevance today. These verbs are: audience, anchor, mean, feel and work. The list is not exhaustive and the reader is invited to think about what verbs they would add or change throughout the book. Audience suggests renewing the importance of ‘form’ as a cultural process and in ‘circling-back’ to Cultural Studies’ ‘circuit of culture’, it proposes a modified framework for ‘the digital circuit’. Each chapter opens with a particular scenario for the reader to reflect upon and asks a specific question to help orient the account of research that is to come, especially for those new to Media and Cultural Studies and to audience studies.

Written in an engaging and accessible style, this book is ideal for both students and researchers of Media and Cultural Studies.

This collection of classic essays focuses on the theoretical frameworks that informed the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham, the methodologies and working practices that the Centre developed for conducting academic research and examples of the studies carried out under the auspices of the Centre.

This volume is split into seven thematic sections that are introduced by key academics working in the field of cultural studies, and includes a preface by eminent scholar, Stuart Hall. The thematic sections are:

This collection of classic essays focuses on the theoretical frameworks that informed the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham, the methodologies and working practices that the Centre developed for conducting academic research and examples of the studies carried out under the auspices of the Centre.

This volume is split into seven thematic sections that are introduced by key academics working in the field of cultural studies, and includes a preface by eminent scholar, Stuart Hall. The thematic sections are:

The unremitting explosion of reality television across the schedules has become a sustainable global phenomenon generating considerable popular and political fervour.

The zeal with which television executives seize on the easily replicated formats is matched equally by the eagerness of audiences to offer themselves up as television participants for others to watch and criticise. But how do we react to so many people breaking down, fronting up, tearing apart, dominating, empathising, humiliating, and seemingly laying bare their raw emotion for our entertainment? Do we feel sad when others are sad? Or are we relieved by the knowledge that our circumstances might be better? As reality television extends into the experiences of the everyday, it makes dramatic and often shocking the mundane aspects of our intimate relations, inviting us as viewers into a volatile arena of mediated morality.

This book addresses the impact of this endless opening out of intimacy as an entertainment trend that erodes the traditional boundaries between spectator and performer demanding new tools for capturing television’s relationships with audiences. Rather than asking how the reality television genre is interpreted as ‘text’ or representation the authors investigate the politics of viewer encounters as interventions, evocations, and more generally mediated social relations.

The authors show how different reactions can involve viewers in tournaments of value, as women viewers empathise and struggle to validate their own lives. The authors use these detailed responses to challenge theories of the self, governmentality and ideology.

A must read for both students and researchers in audience studies, television studies and media and communication studies.

The unremitting explosion of reality television across the schedules has become a sustainable global phenomenon generating considerable popular and political fervour.

The zeal with which television executives seize on the easily replicated formats is matched equally by the eagerness of audiences to offer themselves up as television participants for others to watch and criticise. But how do we react to so many people breaking down, fronting up, tearing apart, dominating, empathising, humiliating, and seemingly laying bare their raw emotion for our entertainment? Do we feel sad when others are sad? Or are we relieved by the knowledge that our circumstances might be better? As reality television extends into the experiences of the everyday, it makes dramatic and often shocking the mundane aspects of our intimate relations, inviting us as viewers into a volatile arena of mediated morality.

This book addresses the impact of this endless opening out of intimacy as an entertainment trend that erodes the traditional boundaries between spectator and performer demanding new tools for capturing television’s relationships with audiences. Rather than asking how the reality television genre is interpreted as ‘text’ or representation the authors investigate the politics of viewer encounters as interventions, evocations, and more generally mediated social relations.

The authors show how different reactions can involve viewers in tournaments of value, as women viewers empathise and struggle to validate their own lives. The authors use these detailed responses to challenge theories of the self, governmentality and ideology.

A must read for both students and researchers in audience studies, television studies and media and communication studies.

Television for Women brings together emerging and established scholars to reconsider the question of ‘television for women’. In the context of the 2000s, when the potential meanings of both terms have expanded and changed so significantly, in what ways might the concept of programming, addressed explicitly to a group identified by gender still matter?

The essays in this collection take the existing scholarship in this field in significant new directions. They expand its reach in terms of territory (looking beyond, for example, the paradigmatic Anglo-American axis) and also historical span. Additionally, whilst the influential methodological formation of production, text and audience is still visible here, the new research in Television for Women frequently reconfigures that relationship.

The topics included here are far-reaching; from television as material culture at the British exhibition in the first half of the twentieth century, women’s roles in television production past and present, to popular 1960s television such as The Liver Birds and, in the twenty-first century, highly successful programmes including Orange is the New Black, Call the Midwife, One Born Every Minute and Wanted Down Under.

This book presents ground-breaking research on historical and contemporary relationships between women and television around the world and is an ideal resource for students of television, media and gender studies.

Television for Women brings together emerging and established scholars to reconsider the question of ‘television for women’. In the context of the 2000s, when the potential meanings of both terms have expanded and changed so significantly, in what ways might the concept of programming, addressed explicitly to a group identified by gender still matter?

The essays in this collection take the existing scholarship in this field in significant new directions. They expand its reach in terms of territory (looking beyond, for example, the paradigmatic Anglo-American axis) and also historical span. Additionally, whilst the influential methodological formation of production, text and audience is still visible here, the new research in Television for Women frequently reconfigures that relationship.

The topics included here are far-reaching; from television as material culture at the British exhibition in the first half of the twentieth century, women’s roles in television production past and present, to popular 1960s television such as The Liver Birds and, in the twenty-first century, highly successful programmes including Orange is the New Black, Call the Midwife, One Born Every Minute and Wanted Down Under.

This book presents ground-breaking research on historical and contemporary relationships between women and television around the world and is an ideal resource for students of television, media and gender studies.