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A look at the emergence of queer women characters in popular storytelling and the wide-ranging effects of this mainstream representation. The twenty-first century has seen LGBTQ+ rights emerge at the forefront of public discourse and national politics in ways that would once have been hard to imagine. In Lesbians on Television, Kate McNicholas Smith maps concurrent contemporary shifts in lesbian visibility within popular media, focusing on the small screens of Europe and North America. Central to these shifts has been a re-imagining of queer lives--or a "new queer visibility"--as LGBTQ+ characters have become increasingly visible within popular culture. Kate McNicholas Smith explores this increased visibility through the lens of television, and in doing so, she identifies a "new lesbian normal"--a normalization of lesbian subjects that both helps and hinders those it represents.  Structured around five central case studies of popular British and American television shows featuring lesbian, bisexual, and queer women characters--The L Word, Skins, Glee, Coronation Street, and The Fosters--the book develops a detailed analysis of the shaping of a new "lesbian normal" through representations of LGBTQ+ figures and examines their televisual representation and reception. Presenting critical queer and feminist theory alongside empirical research that includes interviews and multi-platform media analyses, McNicholas Smith works to untangle the social, political, and cultural implications of new visibility in a period of significant social change in the LGBTQ+ experience.

As LGBTQ movements in Western Europe, North America, and other regions of the world are becoming increasingly successful at awarding LGBTQ people rights, especially institutional recognition for same-sex couples and their families, what becomes of the deeper social transformation that these movements initially aimed to achieve? The United States is in many ways a paradigmatic model for LGBTQ movements in other countries. Sexuality, Subjectivity, and LGBTQ Militancy in the United Statesfocuses on the transformations of the US LGBTQ movement since the 1980s, highlighting the relationship between its institutionalization and the disappearance of sexuality from its most visible claims, so that its growing visibility and legitimation since the 1990s have paradoxically led to a decrease in grassroots militancy. The book examines the issue from the bottom up, identifying the links between the varying importance of sexuality as a movement theme and actors' mobilization, and enhances the import of subjectivity in militancy. It draws attention to cultural, sometimes infrapolitical, forms of militancy that perpetuate the role of sexuality in LGBTQ militancy.

Locating Queerness in the Media: A New Look examines how media images of the LGBTQ community create a universal consciousness about the existence of queer people, ranging from tragic and villainous to upbeat and courageous. In this book, contributors explore how our media world invites a tension that marginalizes the LGBTQ community. It examines what a queer sensibility means and how the queer community is creating new ways to study itself. Throughout the book, contributors explore specific media images that resonate throughout the media, casting the community in a particular manner. Ultimately, its goal is to promote an understanding of the LGBTQ community.