Dear Angela: Remembering My So-Called Life (Critical Studies in Television) [Paperback]

Michele Byers (Editor, Contributor), David Lavery (Editor, Contributor), Susan Murray (Contributor), Andrew Coomes (Contributor), Kelli Maloy (Contributor), Jes Battis (Contributor), Nicholas Birns (Contributor), Jolie Braun (Contributor), Deidre Dowling Price (Contributor), Chris Brooks (Contributor), Barbara Bell (Contributor), Bill Kte'pi (Contributor), Caryn Murphy (Contributor), David Diffrient (Contributor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0739116924 | ISBN-13: 978-0739116920 | Publication Date: August 31, 2007

Dear Angela includes fourteen critical essays that examine the brief-lived but landmark television series, My So-Called Life (1994-1995). Though certainly not the first young woman to be the center of a television series, Angela Chase and the show about her life were doing something new on television and influenced many of the shows about young people that followed. Michele Byers and David Lavery bring together enthusiastic and engaging voices that bear on a series that continues to be hailed as a breakthrough moment in television, even though more than a decade has passed since its cancellation. Tackling a broad range of topics—from identity politics, to music, to infidelity, and death—each essay builds upon a belief that My So-Called Life is a particularly rich text worth studying for the clues it offers about a particular moment in cultural and television history. Dear Angela offers a sophisticated analysis of the show's legacy and cultural relevance that will appeal to media studies scholars and fans alike.

Editorial Reviews

Review

We have waited too many years for a first-rate book on My So-Called Life. Dear Angela has made the wait worthwhile. Editors Michele Byers and David Lavery have gathered an excellent set of essayists who write on topics ranging from Barbara Bell’s brilliant work on language to Kelli Maloy’s piece on music to Jes Battis’s “My So-Called Queer.” And of course Byers’ and Lavery’s own essays are lucid and moving. This book fills an important place in television scholarship; furthermore, fans of the show are sure to enjoy the thoughtful attention these writers pay to a worthy work of television. (Wilcox, Rhonda V. )

Dear Angela is a lively and vivid work that is sure to fascinate any reader interested in thinking about My So-Called Life and its long-lasting cultural impact, which continues today. Anyone curious about teens and television will find this book to be absorbing. (Inness, Sherrie A. )

About the Author

Michele Byers is an associate professor at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. David Lavery holds a chair in film and television at Brunel University in London.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Lexington Books (August 31, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0739116924
• ISBN-13: 978-0739116920
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,364,501 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Lavery is the author of over one hundred and twenty published essays and reviews and author/co-author/editor/co-editor of twenty books published or under contract: Late for the Sky: The Mentality of the Space Age (Southern Illinois U P, 1992), Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks (Wayne State U P, 1994), "Deny All Knowledge": Reading The X-Files (Syracuse U P, 1996), Fighting the Forces: What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slaye(Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), Teleparody: Predicting/Preventing the TV Discourse of Tomorrow (Wallflower, Columbia U P, 2002), This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos (Wallflower, Columbia U P, 2002), Seinfeld, Master of Its Domain: Revisiting Television's Greatest Sitcom (Continuum, 2006), Unlocking the Meaning of Lost: An Unauthorized Guide (Sourcebooks, 2006, 2007), Reading Deadwood: A Western to Swear By and Reading The Sopranos: Hit TV from HBO (in the Reading Contemporary Television Series, I. B. Tauris, 2006), Dear Angela: Remembering My So Called Life (Lexington Books, 2006), Lost's Buried Treasures (Sourcebooks, 2008, 2009, 2010), Saving the World: A Guide to Heroes (ECW, 2007), Finding Battlestar Galactica (Sourcebooks, 2007), The Essential Cult TV Reader (U P Kentucky, 2009), Screwball Television: Critical Perspectives on the Gilmore Girls (Syracuse U P, 2010), Joss Whedon: Conversations (U P Mississippi, 2010), On the Verge of Tears (forthcoming from Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), and Joss: A Creative Portrait of the Maker of the Whedonverses (forthcoming from I. B. Tauris/St. Martin's). The organizer of international conferences on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Sopranos, and Lost, a founding co-editor of the journals Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies and Critical Studies in Television, he has lectured around the world on the subject of television (Australia, Turkey, the UK, Portugal, New Zealand, Ireland, Germany) and has been a guest/source for the BBC, NPR, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, The New York Times, A Folha de Sao Paulo (Brazil), Publica (Portugal), The Toronto Star, USA Today. To learn more about him, visit his home page at http://davidlavery.net/. His C.V (in PDF) is available here: http://davidlavery.net/CV/Lavery_Curriculum_Vitae.pdf.