Female Authorship in Contemporary US Television

This book examines the growing visibility and cultural legitimation of female showrunners and their productions in US television, presenting the role of women in the contemporary media landscape and analysing the feminist sensibility governing female storytelling in the 2010s.

Focusing on a period when television appeared to be endorsing female authorship, the book explores female authorship in US television and unpacks the tensions around “visibility” as an indicator of social change. The book interrogates new emerging forms of feminism, as well as the discursive networks surrounding female authorship and their series, critically examining how women-led TV productions and their paratexts engage with feminist politics and contemporary discourses on gender, race, and LGBTQ+ identities.

This book will interest scholars and students with research interests in gender and television, in particular those working on contemporary television; equality and diversity in the creative industries; televisual authorship; advertising, branding, and marketing of film and television productions; reception discourses; celebrity culture in the digital age as well as on the manifestations of feminism in popular culture.