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Seers, Witches and Psychics on Screen
An Analysis of Women Visionary Characters in Recent Television and Film
by Karin Beeler
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Book Presentation:
This book addresses the pervasive representation of women with unique visionary abilities in postfeminist television series and films from the 1990s to the present. These women mediate between the living and the dead or between different worlds of experience, redefining what it means to be “normal” and challenging the traditional boundary between science and the inner world of visionary, mystical experience.
Part 1 includes a discussion of modern-day Cassandra figures, including the witches and other “seers” of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Charmed, Hex, and Tru Calling. Part 2 discusses modern television shows whose main characters represent a contemporary spin on Joan of Arc, including Joan of Arcadia and the short-lived Wonderfalls. Finally, Part 3 investigates female mediums and other “psychic detectives” in reality television series such as Psychic Investigators and Rescue Mediums; the popular television dramas Medium, Ghost Whisperer, and Afterlife; and contemporary films such as Ghost, The Gift, and Premonition.
About the Author:
Karin Beeler is the English department chair at the University of Northern British Columbia in Canada. She has published in various areas of film and television studies, including screen culture for children.
Press Reviews:
"accessible and readable for researchers and undergraduates alike"—Critical Studies in Television.
See the publisher website: McFarland & Co
> From the same author:
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Tattoos, Desire and Violence (2005)
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