Abortion in Popular Culture: A Call to Action brings together scholars who examine depictions of abortion in film, television, literature, and social media. By examining texts ranging from medical dramas of the 1960s and recent films such as Never Rarely Sometimes Always and Unpregnant to dystopian novels and social-media campaigns, the essays analyze a range of narrative styles, rhetorical strategies, and cinematic techniques, all of which shape cultural attitudes toward abortion. They also analyze cultural shifts, including the willingness or reluctance of networks and cable channels to acknowledge medication abortion and the role that abortion plays in family planning. As a whole, however, the essays argue that popular culture can play a significant role in destigmatizing abortion by including a wider range of narratives and doing so with nuance and empathy. With reproductive rights under attack in the United States, each essay is a call to action for writers, producers, directors, showrunners, authors, and musicians to use their platforms to tell more positive and accurate stories about abortion.

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.

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.