Michaela D. E. Meyer

Looking Toward the InterSEXions

Abstract This paper theorizes how bisexual and transgendered identities are socially constructed through relationships. Traditional models of sexual identity formation have concentrated on the development of gay and lesbian identities, but these models do not adequately explain identity formation for bisexual and transgendered individuals. Furthermore, these models tend to privilege psychological explanations of identity formation. Bisexual and transgendered individuals are caught between the heterosexual and gay/lesbian communities, and thus the ongoing, dynamic process of identity formation for these individuals differs from traditional models of sexual identity formation. Utilizing research on dialectical theory, this essay applies relational dialectical approaches to the formulation of sexual identity “other” than heterosexual or lesbian/gay. Narrative data from published testimonies of bisexual and transgendered individuals highlight the potential applications of this theoretical approach.

Representing Bisexuality on Television: The Case for Intersectional Hybrids

This article examines the representation of bisexual characters in scripted, U.S. prime-time network, dramatic narratives intended for emerging adult audiences. Representations of bisexuality have increased in the early part of the 21st century, but they follow a typical narrative pattern: women are more frequently represented as bisexual than men; they are generally non-White, and their sexuality is often located outside of traditional coming-out narrative disclosure more commonly associated with gay and lesbian representations. As a result, these characters operate as intersectional hybrids that serve hegemonic and counterhegemonic functions simultaneously. These representations of bisexuality contribute to cultural discourses of globalization, racial diversity and citizenship in contemporary U.S. society.

Textual Poaching and Beyond: Fan Communities and Fandoms in the Age of the Internet

The appearance of Henry Jenkins’ influential book Textual Poachers (1992) ushered in a new era of audience research in media studies. Jenkins’ text positioned fans as active consumers of media products, constructing their own cultures and subcultures from popular culture. By challenging the mentality that fans are merely ‘‘cultural dupes,’’ Jenkins opened the door for a generation of scholars to study fans and fan practices as legitimate scholarship. Now, 15 years later, significant changes in the study of fans and fan communities continue to emerge. Over the past decade, communication scholarship has applied Jenkins’ work in a variety of fan contexts. Scholars took to analyzing fan communities surrounding popular television series (Bird, 1999; Meyer, 2005; Scodari, 2003; Scodari & Felder, 2000; Wakefield, 2001) and fan cultures surrounding successful film franchises (Jindra, 1994; Shefrin, 2004). Fan research has expanded our understanding of the interrelationships between humans and media*in particular, crediting agency to those who engage with media on a day-to-day personal basis. The recent publication of three new books on fan culture offers insight into how fan culture is impacted by gender and sexuality, and interrogates the ways fan cultures are changing as a result of the Internet.

Drawing the sexuality card: Teaching, researching, and living bisexuality

This essay utilizes autoethnography to understand the stigma associated with identifying as bisexual in academic contexts. I weave classroom experiences as teacher and student with academic research, social systems, and critical analysis to highlight the importance of multiple approaches to issues of sexuality. While I recognize the logic of withholding one’s sexual identity in the classroom, I also show how denying this information to students and audiences that need it most closes any potential for dialogue that could improve our social and academic understanding of sexuality.

Gender, Media, and Madness: Reading a Rhetoric of Women in Crisis Through Foucauldian Theory

The purpose of this review is to situate contemporary research on media representation within a discourse of gender and madness through Foucauldian theory. The review examines five recent texts in media studies:Mediating Madness: Mental Distress and Cultural Representation (Cross, 2010); Madness, Power and the Media: Class, Gender and Race in Popular Images of Mental Distress (Harper, 2009); Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth about Guilty Pleasure TV (Pozner, 2010); Media Representations of Female Body Images in Womens Magazines (Bale, 2008); and Bad Girls: Cultural Politics and Media Representations of Transgressive Women (Owen, Stein, & Vande Berg, 2007). Through a review of this contemporary scholarship, we argue that media fixation on a rhetoric of women and girls in crisis contributes to our cultural discourse of madness and insanity. Utilizing Foucaults observations about madness and body politics, we expose how madness is constructed as feminine through media discourses that situate womens behaviors in relationship to culturally constructed gender norms.

“We're too afraid of these imaginary tensions”: Student organizing in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender campus communities

This study utilizes grounded theory to examine student organizing in a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community on a college campus. Through a Glaserian approach to grounded theory, this study identifies three key tensions that influence the formation and maintenance of community: Unity and Difference, Commitment and Apathy, and Empowerment and Disempowerment. These tensions co‐exist within the community and produce challenges for organizing social change on campus. Ultimately, this essay argues that all three tensions may be endemic of community organizing, and potentially of organizing practices in general. Future directions for research in organizational communication and community formation are explored.

The Modern(?) Korean Woman in Prime-Time: Analyzing the Representation of Sun on the Television Series Lost

This article investigates the representation of Sun, the most prominent non-white female character on ABCs Lost. Given the importance of Suns character in terms of visibility for Korean women specifically (and Asian women generally) coupled with the fact that Lost under-represents women in general, her role provides a substantial case-study of gender within the science fiction genre. Through a narrative analysis of the first season, we demonstrate the simultaneously flawed and empowered dimensions of Sun, who challenges some of the stereotypes viewers have come to expect from prime-time drama. Elements of colonialism, interpersonal relationships, and the castaway narrative in Lost are also explored.

Women Speak(ing): Forty Years of Feminist Contributions to Rhetoric and an Agenda for Feminist Rhetorical Studies

This essay assesses feminist contributions to the field of rhetoric by examining how feminism reframed scholarly approaches to rhetoric. Two feminist methodologies, “writing women in” to rhetorical canons and “challenging rhetorical standards” are presented as primary feminist arguments in the field of rhetoric. Through this framework, the contributions of feminist rhetoric to communication are highlighted, and an agenda for future avenues of research is suggested, including the incorporation of power feminism through the use of intentional ambiguity, expansions of inter-rhetorical reflexivity in feminist work, and strategies for alliance building in classrooms and scholarly/social communities.

New Directions in Critical Television Studies: Exploring Text, Audience, and Production in Communication Scholarship

In his work on the history of the communication discipline, Eadie (2011) explains that the discipline evolved through a convergence of traditional speech communication, journalism, and other relevant fields seeking to study the power of communicative events (such as English and sociology). Media proliferation occurred while these academic turf wars were waged, and television studies became a prominent topic in our discipline. Although media scholarship borrows from a vast array of theoretical perspectives, this special issue examines current trends in critical television scholarship from communication perspectives. As Fiske and Hartley (1978) eloquently observe:

#Thevagenda's War on Headlines: Feminist Activism in the Information Age

In journalism, the headline reigns supreme. From the age-old adage “if it bleeds, it leads” to contemporary twenty-four-hour news cycles, headlines function as both attention seeking and attention ...