{"id":536,"date":"2011-05-16T14:20:07","date_gmt":"2011-05-16T19:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/?p=536"},"modified":"2011-05-16T14:20:07","modified_gmt":"2011-05-16T19:20:07","slug":"queer-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/queer-tv\/","title":{"rendered":"Queer TV"},"content":{"rendered":"

Queer TV: Theories, Histories, Politics. <\/em>Eds. Glyn Davis and Gary Needham. London: Routledge, 2009. ISBN: 978-0-415-45046-1.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"Queer TV: Theories, Histories, Politics<\/em> is a remarkable collection for the ways in which it expands the terrain of queer television studies. As Davis and Needham note in their introduction, earlier work in the field foregrounded representational critiques (i.e., critiques of \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cbad\u201d representations of queerness or queer characters on popular TV shows), but did not address the kinds of questions raised by scholars working with other media, particularly in film studies. The essays in Queer TV<\/em> attend to this discrepancy, investigating television as a queer medium, offering new models for analyzing viewer experiences, and bringing queer theoretical analyses to bear upon the systems and structures that shape not only what we view but how we view it.<\/p>\n

Several chapters offer close readings of particular episodes of shows with LGB\/queer content (e.g., Ellen, Six Feet Under, Torchwood<\/em>) in order to ask how aspects of queer experience \u2013 like disclosure, non-normative ways of being, and temporal idiosyncrasies \u2015 are represented on television, reveal the medium\u2019s heteronormative aspects, and can lead us to rethink what counts as \u201cqueer\u201d programming. Other chapters focus on technical and structural dimensions of television \u2015 including the shift to digital broadcasting, the use of the remote control to \u201ccruise\u201d channels, the sonic components of the viewing experience, and the ways in which programs are scheduled \u2015 to explore what\u2019s particularly queer about the medium.<\/p>\n

This collection is clearly intended for an academic audience already versed in media studies and queer theory; its authors use frameworks derived from Foucault, Sedgwick, Halberstam, Doane, McCarthy, and McLuhan to articulate their analysis. In-depth understandings of these theorists\u2019 work isn\u2019t essential for understanding the essays, but would help readers situate the critiques within the broader field of queer theory. The authors\u2019 use of examples \u2015 from shows with which many readers, American and British, will be familiar \u2015 helps to anchor the theoretical work.<\/p>\n

Queer TV<\/em> would be a valuable asset to postsecondary instruction in queer media studies courses, not only for its content, but also for the way it models different modes of television criticism for those new to the field (or new to bringing queer theory into conversation with TV).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reviewed by, Alana Kumbier<\/strong>
\nResearch and Instruction Librarian
\nWellesley College<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Queer TV: Theories, Histories, Politics. Eds. Glyn Davis and Gary Needham. London: Routledge, 2009. ISBN: 978-0-415-45046-1. Queer TV: Theories, Histories, Politics is a remarkable collection for the ways in which it expands the terrain of queer television studies. As Davis and Needham note in their introduction, earlier work in the field foregrounded representational critiques (i.e., […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1167,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1167"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}