Gendered Media: Women, Men, and Identity Politics (Critical Media Studies: Institutions, Politics, and Culture) - Tapa dura

Ross offers a broad and overarching look at gender and the media from politics to pornography. * Booklist * The extensive bibliography is formidable and will be of great use to students and scholars. . . . Recommended. * CHOICE * An accessible and lively overview of current thinking in this broad field of research from a writer who knows her own mind. The book shows a passionate commitment to feminist activism while also tracing the contradictory messages of twenty-first century media cultures in the English speaking world. -- Jane Arthurs, University of the West of England, Bristol; author of Television and Sexuality With this book Karen Ross has proven once again that she is one of our most engaged and articulate authors on gender and media. She argues convincingly that classic feminist issues of sexuality and representation need to be reinvented and addressed to counter current cultural cliches that mistakenly suggest a crisis of masculinity and the liberation of femininity. A revealing read for students, and an inspiring agenda for fellow scholars. -- Liesbet Van Zoonen, Loughborough University, UK; Erasmus University, NL Karen Ross has brought us a smart, breezy, sophisticated reading of how the media frame us as gendered subjects and how we use the media. This is the work of someone who knows her way around the territory of previous research and past and present media practices, including the Internet. Using feminist theory and a critical edge, Ross reveals that the more things change, the more things still remain the same. Fortunately, she also leaves us with hope about the potential for using media for advocacy and social change. -- Lana F. Rakow, University of North Dakota

Gendered Media addresses the broad topic of gender and media, where "gender" is not simply a shorthand for "woman" but also embraces masculinitiy/ies, queer, lesbian and gay identities. Karen Ross provides the necessary historical context against which to read recent sex- and gender-based media phenomena such as Big Brother, Terminator, girls' use of mobile phones, women news editors, the Wonderbra generation, the Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin phenomena, and so on. The book is an overview of the various aspects of gender and media in one volume. The book provides introductory overviews to the various themes around women, men, sexuality and the ways in which these attributes are cross-cut by other demographics such as age, ethnicity and disability. In this way, the book genuinely tries to provide a broad introduction to the ways in which gender, in all its facets, engages with media, in one accessible volume.