Recent social and political events in Spain have prompted a resurgence of feminism in the Spanish public sphere. Popular culture intervenes in these debates, and television does so specifically through the dramas which foreground female stories and female subjects, in many cases redefining and interpreting key moments in the progression of national gender politics. This pioneering study maps these developing concerns onto a selection of TV dramas which centre on feminisms and female identities, and as such are key interlocutors in social change. Our intention is to mainstream Spanish television studies and, in our analysis of its innovative and varied approach to gender politics, to take it out of the ‘interpretative isolation ward’ (Smith 2006). This monograph fills a significant gap in the literature on transnational popular culture; it is ground-breaking in its interdisciplinarity (television, modern languages, gender studies) and is the first of its kind in English.

Taking as a starting point an interpretation of the television medium as an Ideological State Apparatus, this book examines how gender roles and non-heteronormative sexualities are constructed in Spanish and Catalan television series. In the first part, which focuses on the construction of gender roles in Catalan soap operas, it applies the analytical paradigms founded by Anglo-Saxon feminist scholars for the content of soap operas to a corpus of material which has rarely been analysed through this perspective. In the second part, which focuses on the construction of non-heteronormative sexualities in Spanish and Catalan television series, the book challenges the rhetoric of “normalisation” and the “essentialist” paradigms which have so far dominated the examination of the construction of sexuality in television series. As such, this book addresses the role performed by television in the construction of meanings which surround gender issues and non-heteronormative sexualities. This is a timely exercise because gender studies and studies of sexual dissidence are fairly recent fields in Spanish and Catalan academia and television has been largely disregarded, especially as far as the analysis of characters and storylines is concerned. As a result, this book represents a major contribution to these fields in the Spanish and Catalan contexts.

Independent Women: From Film to Television explores the significance for feminism of the increasing representation of women on and behind the screen in television contexts around the world. "Independent" has functioned throughout film and television history as an important euphemism for "feminist". This volume investigates how this connection plays out in a contemporary environment that popular feminist discourse is constructing as a golden age of television for women. The original essays in the volume offer insights into how post-network television is being valued as a new site of independent production for women. They also examine how these connotations of creative control influence perceptions of both female creators and their content as feminist. Together, they provide a compelling perspective on the feminist consequences of how independence and "indie" have intensified as cultural sensibilities that coincide and engage with the digital transformation of television during the first decades of the 21st century. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of Feminist Media Studies.

Abstract: A comprehensive report summarizes the past 10 years of research activities and findings concerning the effects of television viewing on child behavior and development. Approximately 90% of all research publications on this topic appeared during this period, representing over 2500 titles. The report is presented in 2 volumes, a summary report and technical reviews. The technical reviews comprise overall, comprehensive, and critical syntheses of the scientific literature on specific topic areas, developed by 24 researchers in this area. The topic areas address such issues as cognitive and emotional aspects of television viewing; television's influences on physical and mental health; television as it relates to socialization and viewer's conceptions of social reality; and television as an American institution. The overall orientation of the report is toward research and public health issues.

Intersectional Feminism in the Age of Transnationalism: Voices from the Margins explores the limitations of the transnationalist approach to feminism and questions the neoliberal emphasis on individual freedom and consumer choice as the central goals of feminist activism. The contributions to the volume discuss such varied topics as fiction by Edwidge Dandicat, Judith Ortiz-Cofer, and Diamela Eltit; visual art of Laura Aguilar and Maruja Mallo; films directed by Lucrecia Martel; a TV series based on a novel by María Dueñas; the art-activism of Ani Ganzala and Zinha Franco; and the philosophical thought of Gloria Anzaldúa. All chapters proceed from the belief in the continued usefulness of intersectionality as a valuable category of critical analysis that is particularly necessary at the time when the effects of neoliberal globalization are undermining many familiar categories of critical inquiry.