The Cultural Studies Program congratulates alumna Wendy A. Burns-Ardolino for her new book TV Female Foursomes and Their Fans. In the book, Burns-Ardolino writes about The Golden Girls, Designing Women, Living Single, Sex and the City, Girlfriends, Cashmere Mafia, and Hot in Cleveland and how they stand out as some of America's favorite television series. Their lovable "female foursome" characters engage in witty banter as they challenge American stereotypes about sex, love, family, work, and community. These sitcoms and comedy-dramas live on as cable-tv re-runs and through online fan communities, demonstrating mass appeal across generations of women and men. Connecting fan commentary with analysis by television scholars, this book explores the development of these series from the 1980s on, with a focus on the role of fan cultures in "reproducing" these popular American shows.
Wendy A. Burns-Ardolino is an associate professor in the Liberal Studies Department at Grand Valley State University, where she teaches courses across the disciplines of liberal, cultural, media and women’s studies and publishes on body studies, feminist theory, globalization, political economy and popular culture.
April 24, 2017