Mary M. Dalton & Laura R. Linder 
The Sitcom Reader, Second Edition 
America Re-viewed, Still Skewed

This updated and expanded anthology offers an engaging overview of one of the oldest and most ubiquitous forms of television programming: the sitcom. Through an analysis of formulaic conventions, the contributors address critical identities such as race, gender, and sexuality, and overarching structures such as class and family. Organized by decade, chapters explore postwar domestic ideology and working-class masculinity in the 1950s, the competing messages of power and subordination in 1960s magicoms, liberated women and gender in 1970s workplace comedies and 1980s domestic comedies, liberal feminism in the 1990s, heteronormative narrative strategies in the 2000s, and unmasking myths of gender in the 2010s. From
I Love Lucy and
The Honeymooners to
Roseanne,
Cybill, and
Will & Grace to
Transparent and many others in between,
The Sitcom Reader provides a comprehensive examination of this popular genre that will help readers think about the shows and themselves in new contexts.



For access to an online resource created by Mary Dalton, which includes interviews with contributors and course lectures, visit:
The Sitcom Reader: A Companion Website @ https://build.zsr.wfu.edu/sitcomreader

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List of Illustrations

Introduction



1. Origins of the Genre: In Search of the Radio Sitcom


David Marc




THE 1950s


2. Who Rules the Roost?: Sitcom Family Dynamics from the Cleavers to
Modern Family


Judy Kutulas



3.
I Love Lucy: Television and Gender in Postwar Domestic Ideology


Lori Landay



4. To the Moon! Working-Class Masculinity in
The Honeymooners


Steven T. Sheehan




THE 1960s


5. The Rural Sitcom from
The Real Mc Coys to Relevance


Rick Worland and John O’Leary



6. The 1960s Magicoms: Safety in Numb-ers


Gary Kenton



7. Negotiated Boundaries: Production Practices and the Making of Representation in
Julia


Demetria Rougeaux Shabazz




THE 1970s


8. The Norman Lear Sitcoms and the 1970s


Gerard Jones



9. Liberated Women and New Sensitive Men: Reconstructing Gender in 1970s Workplace Comedies


Judy Kutulas



10. “Who’s in Charge Here?” Views of Media Ownership in Situation Comedies


Paul R. Kohl




THE 1980s


11.
The Cosby Show: Recoding Ethnicity and Masculinity within the Television Text


Michael Real and Lauren Bratslavsky



12. Roseanne,
Roseanne, Reality, and Domestic Comedy


Susan Mc Leland



13.
Cheers: Searching for the Ideal Public Sphere in the Ideal Public House


Robert S. Brown




THE 1990s


14.
Seinfeld: The Transcendence of the Quotidian


Albert Auster


15.
Cybill: Privileging Liberal Feminism in Daily Sitcom Life


Laura R. Linder and Mary M. Dalton


16. Talking Sex: Comparison Shopping through Female Conversation in HBO’s
Sex and the City


Sharon Marie Ross




THE 2000s



17. “It’s Just a Bunch of Stuff that Happened”:
The Simpsons and the Possibility of Postmodern Comedy


H. Peter Steeves



18. Breaking and Entering: Transgressive Comedy on Television


Michael V. Tueth



19. Sealed with a Kiss: Heteronormative Narrative Strategies in NBC’s
Will & Grace


Denis M. Provencher




THE 2010s



20. The Hidden Truths in Contemporary Black Sitcoms


Robin R. Means Coleman, Charlton D. Mc Ilwain, and
Jessica Moore Matthews



21. Disability and Sitcoms: A
Legit Analysis


James Schultz



22.
Transparent Family Values: Unmasking Sitcom Myths of Gender, Sex(uality), and Money


Maria San Filippo



Conclusion: The Evolving, Resilient Sitcom: Sitcoms are Not Dead!



Bibliography

List of Contributors

Index

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Mary M. Dalton is Professor of Communication and Film Studies at Wake Forest University and author of
The Hollywood Curriculum: Teachers in the Movies, Second Revised Edition.
Laura R. Linder, a retired Associate Professor of Media Studies, is the author of
Public Access Television: America’s Electronic Soapbox. Together they coauthored
Teacher TV: Sixty Years of Teachers on Television.