James Leggott

Julie Taddeo

This collection addresses the social and political contexts that have shaped the British TV costume drama as well as the changing historical contexts in which such programs are viewed again and again (in syndication, on DVD, youtube, etc.) and are reinterpreted by a thriving twenty-first-century global fan culture.

British Costume Drama Television from The Forsyte Saga to Downton Abbey

Upstairs and Downstairs

Featuring ordinary people, celebrities, game shows, hidden cameras, everyday situations, and humorous or dramatic situations, reality TV is one of the fastest growing and important popular culture trends of the past decade, with roots reaching back to the days of radio. The Tube Has Spoken provides an analysis of the growing phenomenon of reality TV, its evolution as a genre, and how it has been shaped by cultural history. This collection of essays looks at a wide spectrum of shows airing from the 1950s to the present, addressing some of the most popular programs including Alan Funt’s Candid Camera, Big Brother, Wife Swap, Kid Nation, and The Biggest Loser. It offers both a multidisciplinary approach and a cross-cultural perspective, considering Australian, Canadian, British, and American programs. In addition, the book explores how popular culture shapes modern western values; for example, both An American Family and its British counterpart, The Family, showcase the decline of the nuclear family in response to materialistic pressures and the modern ethos of individualism. This collection highlights how reality TV has altered the tastes and values of audiences in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It analyzes how reality TV programs reflect the tensions between the individual and the community, the transformative power of technology, the creation of the celebrity, and the breakdown of public and private spheres.

Reality TV and History

The Tube Has Spoken

Suzanne Young

Michael Kaufmann

Loralee Macpike

Maria Frawley

Dagny Boebel

Kornelia Tancheva

Genevieve Sanchis Mogran

Joseph Aimone

Christine W Sizemore

Arguing for a radical re-evaluation of the modernist aesthetic, the essayists consider how women writers created their own version of modernism through the use of sentimental and domestic subject matter, by writing about maternal concerns, and through experiments with plot, voice, and points of view.

Gendered Re-readings

Unmanning Modernism

Julie Taddeo

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