Description
Book SynopsisThis 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
Trade 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)
Table of ContentsContents: Erika Engstrom: The Women of
Mad Men: Workplace Stereotypes Beyond Kanter – Jane Marcellus: «Oh, and Men Love Scarve»: Secretarial Culture From Bartleby the Scrivener to Joan Holloway – Kimberly Wilmot Voss:
Mad Men and Reasonable Women: Selling Lipstick, Exploring Workplace Power, and Raising Babies – Tracy Lucht: Sisterhood in the ’60s: Joan, Peggy, and a Feminist Awakening – Erika Engstrom: Mad Women and the Marriage Gradient: The Risks and Rewards of Highly Competent Women – Kimberly Wilmot Voss: In Defense of Betty: The Role of Gender, Motherhood, and Social Class for Homemakers – Jane Marcellus: «Where the Truth Lies»: Gender, Labor, and «Other» Relationships – Tracy Lucht: Race, Religion, and Rights: Otherness Gone Mad.
