Janet Thumim

Small Screens, Big Ideas brings together specially commissioned writings from British and American contributors to explore themes of diversity in the formative period of the 1950s. With radical changes taking place in terrestrial television, this is a timely moment to revisit the decade when television's very novelty was its most striking feature. Discussing television's role in the construction of national and gender identities and its relation to other media such as theatre, film, and radio, this fresh exploration is based on detailed case-studies of this complex era.

Television in the 1950s

Small Screens, Big Ideas

Taking De Lauretis' proposition that popular cinema is a 'technology of gender' the book explores the representation of women and the readerly activity of female audience members in respect of a group of eighteen films successful at the British box office between 1945 and 1965. A method for the analysis of fictional characters is presented and the discursive context within which contemporary meanings were formed is explored through reference to the press, particularly that addressed to a female readership.

Women And Popular Cinema

Celluloid Sisters

Pat Kirkham

In You Tarzan, the editors set out to broaden the enquiry into masculinity, taking popular cinema as their starting point. A number of male film scholars have been invited to turn the spotlight back on themselves; to name the un-named feelings raised by films, stars or genres as well as importing some of the insights of feminist writing on gender to an analysis of the construction and reading of masculinity in films.

Janet Thumim

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