Domesticating the Airwaves

Dr Maggie Andrews is Senior Lecturer in Popular and Modern History at Staffordshire University, UK with over twenty years of experience in teaching History, Cultural Studies and Media Studies.

• Introduction \ 1. Domesticating the Airwaves \ 2. Early Domestic Goddesses: Competing Discourses of Domestic Expertise \ 3. The Gardener and the Chef: Broadcasting Celebrities 1930s Style \ 4. Domesticity Under Fire: Fractured and Extended \ 5. From Austerity to Consumer Wonderland: Post-War Domesticities \ 6. Broadening Domestic Realities: Soaps, Documentaries, and Working Class Domesticities in the 1960s and 1970s \ 7. The Personal Becomes Political: Domesticity in Turmoil and As a Political Object \ 8. Still Contesting and Idealising Domesticity \ Afterword: An Uncertain Future for Domesticity and Broadcast Media \ Bibliography \ Index.

This is a rich historical study of the complex and often problematic role that broadcasting has always played in constructing notions of gender and domesticity in British society. Maggie Andrews skilfully examines a number of radio and television programmes from the inter-war years to the present day which focus on domestic ideology and practice. She identifies a raft of cultural factors and, with compelling analysis, demonstrates how these have promoted marked changes to the tone, the style and the substance of broadcast programmes over the period. This is an important book for our time: telling insights about the way cultures both influence and are influenced by broadcasting cannot fail to appeal to anyone with a serious interest in recent British social, cultural and political history