Mad Men and Working Women: Feminist Perspectives on Historical Power, Resistance, and Otherness - Softcover

Engstrom, Erika; Lucht, Tracy; Marcellus, Jane; Voss, Kimberly Wilmot

Softcover

ISBN 10: 143313330X ISBN 13: 9781433133305

Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers, 2015

Synopsis

This book was featured as one of thirty-four Epic Feminist Books in Teen Vogue magazine.

This book offers interpretive and contextual tools to read the AMC television series Mad Men, providing a much-needed historical explanation and exposition regarding the status of women in an era that has been painted as pre- or non-feminist. In chapters aimed at helping readers understand women’s lives in the 1960s, Mad Men is used as a springboard to explore and discover alternative ways of seeing women. Offering more than a discussion of the show itself, the book offers historical insight for thinking about serious issues that «modern» working women continue to face today: balancing their work and personal lives, competing with other women, and controlling their own bodies and reproductive choices. Rather than critiquing the show for portraying women as victims, the book shows subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) ways that feminism functioned in an era when women were supposedly caught between the «waves» of the women’s movement but when, the authors argue, they functioned nonetheless as empowered individuals.
By doing so, it provides historical context and analysis that complicates traditional interpretations by (1) exploring historical constructions of women’s work; (2) unpacking feminist and non-feminist discourses surrounding that work; (3) identifying modes of resistance; and (4) revisiting forgotten work coded as feminine.

About this title

About the Author:

Erika Engstrom (PhD, University of Florida) is Professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is the author of The Bride Factory: Mass Media Portrayals of Women and Weddings.
Tracy Lucht (PhD, University of Maryland) is Assistant Professor at Iowa State University. She is the author of Sylvia Porter: America’s Original Personal Finance Columnist.
Jane Marcellus (PhD, University of Oregon) is Professor at Middle Tennessee State University. She is the author of Business Girls and Two-Job Wives: Emerging Media Stereotypes of Employed Women.
Kimberly Wilmot Voss (PhD, University of Maryland) is Associate Professor at the University of Central Florida. She is the author of The Food Section: Newspaper Women and the Culinary Community.

Review:

«This book is a creative contribution to feminist research and gender studies.»
(Xie Ming, Journalism & Mass Communication Educator Volume 70, Issue 4, 2015)

«[T]his contribution to gender studies is a fresh and insightful work that offers numerous points of entry for readers, and is a welcome addition to scholarly work on popular mediums.»
(Heather Lusty, Popular Culture Review 26.1, 2015)

About this edition

• Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 143313330X
• ISBN 13: 9781433133305
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 195