American Studies (AMST) -For a syllabus or more detailed course information, please contact the department

at 610-758-4745.

Course Listings

  Course#                    Course Title (Credit Hours)          CRN        Day/Time               Location   Session Instructor

Course Descriptions

397. Feminist Theory in Television: This course will explore the ways in which feminist theory gets disseminated within popular television shows, beginning with the feminism of the 1970s in relation to shows such as “Mary Tyler Moore” and “One Day at a Time” and moving through what has been called by many the “postfeminist” era with “Murphy Brown” and “Ally McBeal.”  We will pay particular attention to 90s shows “Sex and the City” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”  We will focus on issues that have centrality preoccupied both feminist theory and television, including women’s equality with and difference from men; women’s role in marriage, the family and in the workplace; sexual desire;  female friendships; and agency, power, and violence.  We will read feminist theorists from the 1970s to the present along with the following books: Bonnie Dow, Prime-Time Feminism; Charlotte Brunsdon, ed., Feminist Television Criticism; Kim Akass and Janet McCabe, eds., Reading Sex and the City; and Lorna Jewett, Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for The Buffy Fan.