Traces the history of feminism's engagement with soap opera using programme publicity and interviews with key scholars. The book shows how feminist scholarship on soap opera was advanced by examining dialogue between the "feminist intellectual" and the soap-opera-watching "housewife".

The Feminist, the Housewife, and the Soap Opera traces the history of the feminist engagement with soap opera using a wide range of sources from programme publicity to interviews with key soap opera scholars. The book reveals that feminist scholarship on soap opera was a significant site of which the identity 'feminist intellectual' was produced in dialogue with her imagined other, the soap opera watching housewife. The book integrates personal autobiographical accounts within a broader history which traces both the move from 'women's liberation' to 'Feminism', and the acceptance of soap opera as a serious object of study.

Introduction
PART 1. MAPPING THE FIELDS
Women's genres and female agency
PART 2. EARLY WORK ON SOAP OPERA: "WORRYING RESPONSIBILITY"
The Housewife in the 1940s Mass Communication Research: Arnheim, Kaufman, and Herzog
Feminists Taking Soap Opera Seriously: The Work of Carol Lopate, Michele Mattelart, and Tania Modleski
Fantasies of the Housewife: The Case of Crossroads
PART 3. TALKING SOAP OPERA
Autobiography and Ethnography
'I don't think we thought about it as studying soap opera': Christine Geraghty
'What about the rest of the audience?' Dorothy Hobson
'Slightly guilty pleasures': Terry Lovell
'The pleasure of a programme like this is not something simple': Ien Ang
'A sense of trying to valorise soap opera as women's TV': Ellen Seiter
Commonalties: Writing Across the Interviews
The Feminist, the Housewife, and the Soap Opera
Appendix
Bibliography