Erika Engstrom

Joseph M. Valenzano, III

This book uses a theory-based inquiry of the nuanced religious messages in the TV series Supernatural, which presents religious themes through horror and fantasy to show a Christianity without Christ. It uncovers how entertainment television provides a conduit for religious messages that speak to the role of contemporary American faith.

Hunting Monsters, Finding Gods

Television, Religion, and Supernatural

Tracy Lucht

Kimberly Wilmot Voss

Jane Marcellus

Now available in paperback, and with a revised conclusion to reflect the end of the program, 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.

Erika Engstrom

Books

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