Lisa M. Cuklanz

Television's “New” Feminism: Prime-Time Representations of Women and Victimization

The prime-time program Law & Order: Special Victims Unit offers a unique blend of characteristics, with its allowed focus on sexual assult and its location within the tradition of the historically masculine detective genre. We argue that SVUs depiction of sexual assault integrates feminist insights, but its depictions of women criminals and feminine qualities remain problematic. Analysis of episodes that center on the dynamics of the family and crimes committed by women helps to point out how the series recreates the idea of the “monstrous maternal.” SVUs contradictory combination of feminist insights and denigration of feminine qualities represents a new stage of televisual feminism.

The masculine ideal: Rape on prime‐time television, 1976–1978

This study examines 25 episodes of prime time television featuring rape as a primary plot element from 1976 through 1978. These episodes say little about rape law reform or victim rights and experiences, serving instead as a discourse on masculinity. The episodes serve to bolster hegemonic masculinity by focusing on male protagonists, depicting them as nurturing and concerned for victim rights and feelings.

“Shrill squawk”; or strategic innovation: A rhetorical reassessment of Margaret Sanger's woman rebel

This paper examines previous scholarship on Sangers publication The Woman Rebel, arguing that Sanger biographers and scholars of the birth control movement have had an oversimplified understanding of its rhetorical form and function. The paper undertakes a systematic critique of prior scholarship which argues that the journal was a failure, and argues for its strategic and rhetorical success in spite of its sometimes strident, offensive tone. Although intemperate, Sangers rhetorical message was a coherent description of what is now socialist feminism, and it addressed its primary audience of working class women primarily through simplistic moral reasoning and identification.

Framing Female Lawyers: Women on Trial in Film, by Cynthia A. B. Lucia

previous and subsequent films might be fitted to the definitive elements of this genre. International law and ethics are explored through the key concepts of sovereignty, idealism, and consensus, which is a most ambitious undertaking for a short chapter (pp. 120–132). A short, basic excursus on the evolution of German law permits Chase to point out ways in which Judgment at Nuremberg flagrantly contradicts actions in the Germany of the 1930s and 1940s but eloquently renders issues in the United States of the 1950s. Students of politics and communication thus will be encouraged to ruminate on some fascinating films and important ideas by this provocative, pithy book. It is only minimally about the pragmatics or production of films, so readers with those interests will have to expand their relevances to profit from the questions and contentions that the author raises. Readers who relax and take Chase’s reveries for what they are worth will discover that the insights are worth a great deal. Those who are looking for theoretical syntheses or architectonic conclusions will not find them herein.