Feminist Reception Studies in a Post-Audience Age Returning to Audiences and Everyday Life

This book makes an important return to reception studies at an exciting juncture of media distribution and modes of consumption. The editors’ introduction contextualizes this new work within a long history of feminist approaches to audience research, and argues that new media forms require new methods of research that remain invested in questions of gender, sexuality, and power. The contributions are rooted in the dynamics of everyday life and present innovative approaches to media and audiences. These include investigating online contexts, transnational flows of media images, and new possibilities of self-representation and distribution. Collectively, this work provides a robust theoretical and methodological framework for understanding media reception from a feminist communication and media studies perspective. The scholars included are in the vanguard of contemporary thinking about media audiences and users of technology in what some call the ‘post-audience’ age. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Feminist Media Studies.

Introduction – Feminist reception studies in a post-audience age: returning to audiences and everyday life 1. Lemony Liz and likable Leslie: audience understandings of feminism, comedy, and gender in women-led television comedies 2. Orange Is the New Black: the popularization of lesbian sexuality and heterosexual modes of viewing 3. A queerly normalized Western lesbian imaginary: online Chinese fans’ gossip about the Danish fashion model 4. Leave a comment: mommyblogs and the everyday struggle to reclaim parenthood 5. MirrorCameraRoom: the gendered multi-(in)stabilities of the selfie 6. Fifty shades of consent?

Andre Cavalcante is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality at the University of Virginia, USA. He specializes in the study of media audiences and his work focuses on LGBTQ issues and everyday life. He is the author of the forthcoming book Struggling for Ordinary: Media and Transgender Belonging in Everyday Life. Andrea Press is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and Media Studies at the University of Virginia, USA, where she is the Founding Chair of the Department of Media Studies. She served as the Executive Director of the Virginia Film Festival for three years, and has published widely on feminist media audiences. She has three forthcoming books: Media and Class: TV, Film, and Digital Culture; The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Feminism; and Media-Ready Feminism and Everyday Sexism. Katherine Sender is Professor of Media and Sexuality in the Department of Communication at the University of Michigan, USA. Her book The Makeover: Reality Television and Reflective Audiences (2012), as well as her other books and articles, investigates feminist and queer approaches to media reception and production.