Laura Grindstaff
Biographic Data
| ID | 103290 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Laura Grindstaff |
| GIVEN NAMES | Laura |
| FAMILY NAME | Grindstaff |
| SIGNATURE | GRINDSTAFF L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Davis |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8897-4237 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 63 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Agon and Apron: Hybridizing gender by “sportifying” cooking in MasterChef USA
Competition is fundamental to American life, and sport is the cultural institution most closely linked to organized competition in the U.S. Historically, sport has been a male preserve. At the same time, the structures, practices, and iconography of sports have infiltrated a variety of social fields and institutions less obviously dominated by men—a process known as “sportification.” Reality programing is one such field. In this paper, we analyze…
The filtered self: Selfies and gendered media production
In 2013, the Oxford English Dictionary selected ‘selfie’ as the word of the year. Since that time, selfies have been much discussed in the media and increasingly in academia. Selfie culture is gendered not only because women take more selfies than men but also because women’s selfie-taking is both criticized (as narcissistic) and defended (as empowering) on feminist grounds. In this paper, we draw upon the existing literature on selfies as well a…
De l’importance d’être ordinaire: Intermédiaires et talents à l’ère de la téléréalité
Si, aujourd’hui, les chaînes câblées payantes et autres plates-formes de vidéos à la demande proposent de plus en plus de séries au scénario très élaboré, interprétées par les plus grands noms d’Hollywood, à l’opposé du spectre de l’offre télévisuelle on trouve notamment les talk-shows et les programmes de téléréalité. Si les premiers rapprochent l’expérience télévisuelle de celle du cinéma, les seconds semblent l’en éloigner d’autant plus. En ef…
Routledge Handbook of Cultural Sociology
The thoroughly revised and updated second edition of the Routledge Handbook of Cultural Sociology provides an unparalleled overview of sociological and related scholarship on the complex relations of culture to social structures and everyday life. With 70 essays written by scholars from around the world, the book brings diverse approaches into dialogue, charting new pathways for understanding culture in our global era. Short, accessible chapters …
Reality Celebrity: Branded Affect and the Emotion Economy
More than any other form of media, reality television has reignited interest in celebrity discourse because of the genre's incorporation of ordinary people and the conflation of ordinariness with raw, real emotion. This article argues that reality TV is part of an emerging "emotion economy" that generates unique forms of celebrity by producing and circulating heightened emotional performances as "branded affect." A key signifier of what reality T…
From Jerry Springer to Jersey Shore: The Cultural Politics of Class in/on US Reality Programming
Scholarly research on reality TV has grown apace with the genre itself, exploring many critical dimensions of its production, reception and political-economic context.Although the scholarly literature on reality programming is too vast to list comprehensively, book-length contributions include Fried
Hegemonic Masculinity on the Sidelines of Sport
Nearly a quarter of a century old, the concept of hegemonic masculinity as developed by R. W. Connell remains both influential and contested among gender scholars. In this essay, we use our research on coed cheerleading in the United States as a springboard to explore the bounds and limits of hegemonic masculinity as both cultural script and analytic construct. Cheerleading constitutes a public stage for ‘doing gender’ in ways that highlight norm…
Communication Power
Handbook of Cultural Sociology
Hands on Hips, Smiles on Lips!” Gender, Race, and the Performance of Spirit in Cheerleading
Cheerleading has long been synonymous with “spirit” because of its traditional sideline role in supporting school sports programs. In recent decades, however, cheerleading has become more athletic and competitive—even a sport in its own right. This essay is an ethnographic exploration of the emotional dimensions of cheerleading in light of these changes. We argue that spirit is a regulating but also flexible concept that is deployed in order to m…
Culture and Popular Culture: A Case for Sociology
The study of popular culture has a long and intimate relationship to the field of cultural sociology, being both a subcategory of the field and a separate arena of inquiry taken up by other disciplines. This article examines the intellectual traditions that have shaped the sociology of popular culture, traces the points of connection and difference between sociologists and other scholars studying popular culture, and argues for the continued rele…
Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory
The Facts Unframed Will Not Set You Free
When first asked to participate in this symposium on I hedged. Whether by nature or upbringing, I am conflict-averse-an odd quality, perhaps, for someone who spent years studying the likes of The Jerry Springer Show. Furthermore, I knew some of the reading proposed for discussion would prove a challenge to my tolerance. Yet this forum also promised to complicate my understanding of the seemingly intractable cultural divide that the press is so fo…
Framing Class: Media Representations of Wealth and Poverty in America
Cheerleading and the Gendered Politics of Sport
Cheerleading occupies a contested space in American culture and a key point of controversy is whether it ought to be considered a sport. Drawing on interviews with college cheerleaders on coed squads as well as five years of fieldwork in various cheerleading sites, this paper examines the debate over cheerleading and sport in terms of its gender politics. The bid for sport status on the part of cheerleaders revolves around the desire for respect …
Video Cultures: Television Sociology in the 'New TV' Age
We argue that the most significant and influential research on television over the past five decades positions the medium as a key site for addressing the complex interrelationship between culture and institutional/organizational power. Granting that such work is theoretically and methodologically diverse, we employ an organizational frame that groups political-economic approaches on the one hand and cultural approaches on the other. Political-ec…
Talking Trash: The Cultural Politics of Daytime TV Talk Shows
The Money Shot: Trash, Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows
A Pygmalion Tale Retold: Remaking La Femme Nikita
Laura Grindstaff is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis, and a member of the graduate group in cultural studies. She teaches in the areas of media, popular culture, ethnography, and social and feminist theory. Her published work explores the production and reproduction of gender-, race-, and class-based hierarchies in US popular culture. She has a book about daytime television talk shows forthcoming from the…
Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and (Male) Hysteria over John Bobbitt's Missing Manhood
This article draws on feminist theory and psychoanalysis to analyze the media discourse surrounding the 1993 incident in which Lorena Bobbitt severed her husband's penis after he allegedly raped her. Touted as the ultimate example of 'male bashing,' Lorena's literal emasculation of John was described in the media as a specific instance of feminism's more general emasculation of men. This framing, like castration anxiety itself, reveals the intima…
Double Exposure, Double Erasure: On the Frontline with Anita Hill
The television debut of Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill: Public Hearings, Private Pain marked the one-year anniversary of the Thomas/Hill hearings. The one-hour PBS documentary was produced for Frontline by Ofra Bikel, who confides in the first minutes of the program, [T]he fact that the man and woman testifying were black seemed not matter. This was beyond race-or so I thought. That was before I spoke with African-Americans I knew. A white woman,…
Cheerleading and the Gendered Politics of Sport
Cheerleading occupies a contested space in American culture and a key point of controversy is whether it ought to be considered a sport. Drawing on interviews with college cheerleaders on coed squads as well as five years of fieldwork in various cheerleading sites, this paper examines the debate over cheerleading and sport in terms of its gender politics. The bid for sport status on the part of cheerleaders revolves around the desire for respect …
Video Cultures: Television Sociology in the 'New TV' Age
We argue that the most significant and influential research on television over the past five decades positions the medium as a key site for addressing the complex interrelationship between culture and institutional/organizational power. Granting that such work is theoretically and methodologically diverse, we employ an organizational frame that groups political-economic approaches on the one hand and cultural approaches on the other. Political-ec…
Hegemonic Masculinity on the Sidelines of Sport
Nearly a quarter of a century old, the concept of hegemonic masculinity as developed by R. W. Connell remains both influential and contested among gender scholars. In this essay, we use our research on coed cheerleading in the United States as a springboard to explore the bounds and limits of hegemonic masculinity as both cultural script and analytic construct. Cheerleading constitutes a public stage for ‘doing gender’ in ways that highlight norm…
Hands on Hips, Smiles on Lips!” Gender, Race, and the Performance of Spirit in Cheerleading
Cheerleading has long been synonymous with “spirit” because of its traditional sideline role in supporting school sports programs. In recent decades, however, cheerleading has become more athletic and competitive—even a sport in its own right. This essay is an ethnographic exploration of the emotional dimensions of cheerleading in light of these changes. We argue that spirit is a regulating but also flexible concept that is deployed in order to m…
Culture and Popular Culture: A Case for Sociology
The study of popular culture has a long and intimate relationship to the field of cultural sociology, being both a subcategory of the field and a separate arena of inquiry taken up by other disciplines. This article examines the intellectual traditions that have shaped the sociology of popular culture, traces the points of connection and difference between sociologists and other scholars studying popular culture, and argues for the continued rele…
Reality Celebrity: Branded Affect and the Emotion Economy
More than any other form of media, reality television has reignited interest in celebrity discourse because of the genre's incorporation of ordinary people and the conflation of ordinariness with raw, real emotion. This article argues that reality TV is part of an emerging "emotion economy" that generates unique forms of celebrity by producing and circulating heightened emotional performances as "branded affect." A key signifier of what reality T…
Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and (Male) Hysteria over John Bobbitt's Missing Manhood
This article draws on feminist theory and psychoanalysis to analyze the media discourse surrounding the 1993 incident in which Lorena Bobbitt severed her husband's penis after he allegedly raped her. Touted as the ultimate example of 'male bashing,' Lorena's literal emasculation of John was described in the media as a specific instance of feminism's more general emasculation of men. This framing, like castration anxiety itself, reveals the intima…
Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory
Agon and Apron: Hybridizing gender by “sportifying” cooking in MasterChef USA
Competition is fundamental to American life, and sport is the cultural institution most closely linked to organized competition in the U.S. Historically, sport has been a male preserve. At the same time, the structures, practices, and iconography of sports have infiltrated a variety of social fields and institutions less obviously dominated by men—a process known as “sportification.” Reality programing is one such field. In this paper, we analyze…
The Facts Unframed Will Not Set You Free
When first asked to participate in this symposium on I hedged. Whether by nature or upbringing, I am conflict-averse-an odd quality, perhaps, for someone who spent years studying the likes of The Jerry Springer Show. Furthermore, I knew some of the reading proposed for discussion would prove a challenge to my tolerance. Yet this forum also promised to complicate my understanding of the seemingly intractable cultural divide that the press is so fo…
Talking Trash: The Cultural Politics of Daytime TV Talk Shows
Double Exposure, Double Erasure: On the Frontline with Anita Hill
The television debut of Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill: Public Hearings, Private Pain marked the one-year anniversary of the Thomas/Hill hearings. The one-hour PBS documentary was produced for Frontline by Ofra Bikel, who confides in the first minutes of the program, [T]he fact that the man and woman testifying were black seemed not matter. This was beyond race-or so I thought. That was before I spoke with African-Americans I knew. A white woman,…
Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and (Male) Hysteria over John Bobbitt's Missing Manhood
This article draws on feminist theory and psychoanalysis to analyze the media discourse surrounding the 1993 incident in which Lorena Bobbitt severed her husband's penis after he allegedly raped her. Touted as the ultimate example of 'male bashing,' Lorena's literal emasculation of John was described in the media as a specific instance of feminism's more general emasculation of men. This framing, like castration anxiety itself, reveals the intima…
A Pygmalion Tale Retold: Remaking La Femme Nikita
Laura Grindstaff is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis, and a member of the graduate group in cultural studies. She teaches in the areas of media, popular culture, ethnography, and social and feminist theory. Her published work explores the production and reproduction of gender-, race-, and class-based hierarchies in US popular culture. She has a book about daytime television talk shows forthcoming from the…
The Money Shot: Trash, Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows
Talking Trash: The Cultural Politics of Daytime TV Talk Shows
Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory
The Facts Unframed Will Not Set You Free
When first asked to participate in this symposium on I hedged. Whether by nature or upbringing, I am conflict-averse-an odd quality, perhaps, for someone who spent years studying the likes of The Jerry Springer Show. Furthermore, I knew some of the reading proposed for discussion would prove a challenge to my tolerance. Yet this forum also promised to complicate my understanding of the seemingly intractable cultural divide that the press is so fo…
Framing Class: Media Representations of Wealth and Poverty in America
Cheerleading and the Gendered Politics of Sport
Cheerleading occupies a contested space in American culture and a key point of controversy is whether it ought to be considered a sport. Drawing on interviews with college cheerleaders on coed squads as well as five years of fieldwork in various cheerleading sites, this paper examines the debate over cheerleading and sport in terms of its gender politics. The bid for sport status on the part of cheerleaders revolves around the desire for respect …
Video Cultures: Television Sociology in the 'New TV' Age
We argue that the most significant and influential research on television over the past five decades positions the medium as a key site for addressing the complex interrelationship between culture and institutional/organizational power. Granting that such work is theoretically and methodologically diverse, we employ an organizational frame that groups political-economic approaches on the one hand and cultural approaches on the other. Political-ec…
Culture and Popular Culture: A Case for Sociology
The study of popular culture has a long and intimate relationship to the field of cultural sociology, being both a subcategory of the field and a separate arena of inquiry taken up by other disciplines. This article examines the intellectual traditions that have shaped the sociology of popular culture, traces the points of connection and difference between sociologists and other scholars studying popular culture, and argues for the continued rele…
Handbook of Cultural Sociology
Hands on Hips, Smiles on Lips!” Gender, Race, and the Performance of Spirit in Cheerleading
Cheerleading has long been synonymous with “spirit” because of its traditional sideline role in supporting school sports programs. In recent decades, however, cheerleading has become more athletic and competitive—even a sport in its own right. This essay is an ethnographic exploration of the emotional dimensions of cheerleading in light of these changes. We argue that spirit is a regulating but also flexible concept that is deployed in order to m…
From Jerry Springer to Jersey Shore: The Cultural Politics of Class in/on US Reality Programming
Scholarly research on reality TV has grown apace with the genre itself, exploring many critical dimensions of its production, reception and political-economic context.Although the scholarly literature on reality programming is too vast to list comprehensively, book-length contributions include Fried
Hegemonic Masculinity on the Sidelines of Sport
Nearly a quarter of a century old, the concept of hegemonic masculinity as developed by R. W. Connell remains both influential and contested among gender scholars. In this essay, we use our research on coed cheerleading in the United States as a springboard to explore the bounds and limits of hegemonic masculinity as both cultural script and analytic construct. Cheerleading constitutes a public stage for ‘doing gender’ in ways that highlight norm…
Communication Power
Reality Celebrity: Branded Affect and the Emotion Economy
More than any other form of media, reality television has reignited interest in celebrity discourse because of the genre's incorporation of ordinary people and the conflation of ordinariness with raw, real emotion. This article argues that reality TV is part of an emerging "emotion economy" that generates unique forms of celebrity by producing and circulating heightened emotional performances as "branded affect." A key signifier of what reality T…
Routledge Handbook of Cultural Sociology
The thoroughly revised and updated second edition of the Routledge Handbook of Cultural Sociology provides an unparalleled overview of sociological and related scholarship on the complex relations of culture to social structures and everyday life. With 70 essays written by scholars from around the world, the book brings diverse approaches into dialogue, charting new pathways for understanding culture in our global era. Short, accessible chapters …
De l’importance d’être ordinaire: Intermédiaires et talents à l’ère de la téléréalité
Si, aujourd’hui, les chaînes câblées payantes et autres plates-formes de vidéos à la demande proposent de plus en plus de séries au scénario très élaboré, interprétées par les plus grands noms d’Hollywood, à l’opposé du spectre de l’offre télévisuelle on trouve notamment les talk-shows et les programmes de téléréalité. Si les premiers rapprochent l’expérience télévisuelle de celle du cinéma, les seconds semblent l’en éloigner d’autant plus. En ef…
The filtered self: Selfies and gendered media production
In 2013, the Oxford English Dictionary selected ‘selfie’ as the word of the year. Since that time, selfies have been much discussed in the media and increasingly in academia. Selfie culture is gendered not only because women take more selfies than men but also because women’s selfie-taking is both criticized (as narcissistic) and defended (as empowering) on feminist grounds. In this paper, we draw upon the existing literature on selfies as well a…
Agon and Apron: Hybridizing gender by “sportifying” cooking in MasterChef USA
Competition is fundamental to American life, and sport is the cultural institution most closely linked to organized competition in the U.S. Historically, sport has been a male preserve. At the same time, the structures, practices, and iconography of sports have infiltrated a variety of social fields and institutions less obviously dominated by men—a process known as “sportification.” Reality programing is one such field. In this paper, we analyze…
Sociology (16 works) · Political science (9 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Art (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Media studies (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Anthropology (5 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Psychology (5 works)