Televising Queer Women

Rebecca Beirne is Lecturer in Film, Media, and Cultural Studies at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She is the author of Lesbians in Television and Text after the Millennium (2008), co-editor (with James Bennett) of Making Film and Television Histories: Australia and New Zealand (2011), and has published multiple essays discussing queer representation in popular culture.

• A Critical Introduction to Queer Women on Television Resisting, Reiterating, and Dancing Through: The Swinging Closet Doors of Ellen DeGeneres' Televised Personalities; C.Moore Mommy's Got a Gal-pal: The Victimized Lesbian Mother in the Made-for-TV-Movie; K.Kessler Complicating the Open Closet: The Visual Rhetoric of Buffy the Vampire Slayer 's Sapphic Lovers; T.Cochran   'Can You Just Be Kissing Me Now?': The Question(s) of Willow in Buffy the Vampire Slayer; C.Masson States of Emergency: The Labors of Lesbian Desire in ER; D.Heller Mapping Lesbian Sexuality on Queer as Folk; R.Beirne A Label Like Gucci, Versace, or Birkenstock:  Sex and the City and Queer Identity; T.Adkins 'Going Native on Wonder Woman's Island': The Exoticization of Lesbian Sexuality in Sex and the City; M.M.M.Hidalgo 'This Is the Way We Live…and Love!': Feeding on and Still Hungering for Lesbian Representation in The L Word; M.Pratt '[E]verything else is the same': Configurations of The L Word; M.C.Jonet & L.Anh Williams 'Shades of Grey': Articulations of Bisexuality in The L Word; J.Moorman Paradigmatically Oppositional Representations: Gender and Sexual Identity in The L Word; F.Davies Pink Heels, Dildos, and Erotic Play: The (Re)Making of Fem(me)ininity in Showtime's The L Word; E.Douglas There's Something Queer Going on in Orange County: The Representation of Queer Women's Sexuality on The O.C.; A.Burgess

'This collection is a welcome and timely addition to the growing library of academic texts exploring the complex and politically-charged intersections between television and queer identities. The essays gathered within its pages offer entertaining and provocative insights into a range of recent and contemporary US TV series. As a collection, the book highlights not only the variety of individual responses to multivalent texts, but also the ongoing importance of detailed interrogation of lesbian, bisexual and queer characters and programming.' - Glyn Davis, University of Bristol, UK; Author of Queer as Folk (2007) and co-editor of Queer TV (2008) 'From Ellen to AfterEllen.com the L Word is finally being spoken on US television, and these smart and sassy essays help us see where things are changing and where they are still la meme chose. Nobody said it would be easy, and the scholars represented here are neither sentimental nor simply celebratory in their approach to the new lesbian visibility.Their cool and careful readings will help us all locate ourselves in the contemporary landscape of mediated queerness.' - Larry Gross, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California, USA