Feministing Represents: CWGS Director Dr. Lisa Johnson Gets Holiday Shout-Out!!!

Courtney Martin, book editor for the popular online blog Feministing, donned some holiday spirit with her "Not Oprah's Book Club," offering gift ideas for a feminist-friendly shopping list.  Number two of her five picks? That's right -- Third Wave Feminism and Television: Jane Puts It in a Box by our very own Dr. Lisa Johnson!!!!!  Martin writes:

If you know a sucker for any of the following--Six Feet Under, the Sopranos, vampires--then you may want to pick up this awesome anthology for them, published over the pond by I.B. Tauris Press. Johnson, the Director for the Center for Women's Studies at the University of South Carolina-Upstate, brings together a range of totally intriguing and theoretically rigorous essays on the intersection between popular television and new feminisms. 

She [Johnson] introduces: 

As riddled with stereotypes as media culture admittedly is, television can also provide rare insight into alternative ways of living in the world. The small screen paradoxically provides a broader horizon. For rural adolescents, television can be the sole window into big-city subjects like homosexuality, singlehood-by-choice, multiculturalism, and, I'm not kidding, existentialism--my philosophy minor may well have stemmed from a certain episode of Family Ties in which Alex's little sister, Jennifer, reads Kierkegaard at the kitchen table. 

Gotta love that.

As one of the readings in Upstate's Feminist Theory and Methods course a few years back (which Professor Tuttle-Bell will be offering this spring. . . hint. . . hint. . .), Jane Puts It in a Box remains of the most influential texts for me in my own (ongoing/ never-ending) love affair with feminist and queer media criticism.  So I have to agree with Courtney Martin that the book just kicks some major ass.  The essays run the gamut of television interests, covering everything from The Sopranos (our own Dr. Johnson's treatment of gangster feminism!) to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and even The Bachelor (Katherine Martin's remarkably fresh and insightful approach to the series from the angle of critical heterosexuality studies).  Jane Puts It in a Box is smart, sexy, and approachable while completely edgy in its theoretical content.  A real tour de force, if you will (I am really trying to refrain from inserting an emoticon right here. . . ergh. . . ack. . . oh, self-discipline!!!!).  Phew -- made it sans winking, tongue-stuck-out smiley face. . . 

But let us all just revel in some holiday joy at such exciting publicity.  Take a moment.  Savor it.  Ahhh. . .  Sigh. . .  Thank you, Courtney Martin at Feministing and a huge congratulations to Dr. Johnson on the spotlight!!! 

-- Andrea