Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television

Author:   Annie Berke
Publisher:   University of California Press
Volume:   1
ISBN:  

9780520300798


Pages:   302
Publication Date:   04 January 2022
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
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Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television


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Overview

A rich account that combines media-industry history and cultural studies, Their Own Best Creations looks at women writers' contributions to some of the most popular genres of postwar TV: comedy-variety, family sitcom, daytime soap, and suspense anthology. During the 1950s, when the commercial medium of television was still being defined, women writers navigated pressures at work, constructed public personas that reconciled traditional and progressive femininity, and asserted that a woman's point of view was essential to television as an art form. The shows they authored allegorize these professional and personal pressures and articulate a nascent second-wave feminist consciousness. Annie Berke brings to light the long-forgotten and under-studied stories of these women writers and crucially places them in the historical and contemporary record.

Full Product Details

Author:   Annie Berke
Publisher:   University of California Press
Imprint:   University of California Press
Volume:   1
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.80cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.408kg
ISBN:  

9780520300798


ISBN 10:   0520300793
Pages:   302
Publication Date:   04 January 2022
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

Table of Contents

Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments    Introduction 1. Craftsmen and Work Wives    The Gendering of Television Writing     2. “A Sea of Male Interests”    Your Show of Shows and the Comedy of Female Mischief     3. Gertrude Berg, Peg Lynch, and the “Small Situation”    of the Stay-at-Home Showrunner     4. “What Girl Shouldn’t?”    The Many Children of Irna Phillips     5. “Knowing All the Plots”    Presenting the Woman Story Editor     6. “A Girl’s Gotta Live”    The Literate Heroines of the Suspense Anthology Drama        Conclusion    Better Than It Never Was     Notes Bibliography Index

Reviews

Berke's imagination - bolstered by insight, expertise, and scholarship - reveals stunning depths. Authors' intent may be unknowable, but critical interpretations are their own kind of creative work. Berke's interpretations are generative and convincing accounts of the way that art and artists can come to reflect each other. * Los Angeles Review of Books *


"""Berke’s imagination — bolstered by insight, expertise, and scholarship — reveals stunning depths. Authors’ intent may be unknowable, but critical interpretations are their own kind of creative work. Berke’s interpretations are generative and convincing accounts of the way that art and artists can come to reflect each other.""   * Los Angeles Review of Books *"


"""Berke’s imagination — bolstered by insight, expertise, and scholarship — reveals stunning depths. Authors’ intent may be unknowable, but critical interpretations are their own kind of creative work. Berke’s interpretations are generative and convincing accounts of the way that art and artists can come to reflect each other.""   * Los Angeles Review of Books * ""Their Own Best Creations seamlessly bridges the fields of media studies and feminist studies via a rich and lively exploration of the women who scripted the first Golden Age of television."" * Journal of Cinema and Media Studies *"


Author Information

Annie Berke is the film editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her scholarship and criticism have been published in Camera Obscura, Public Books, Feminist Media Histories, Ms, and the Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television. She was formerly Assistant Professor of Film at Hollins University.

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