This is the first book-length study of The Golden Girls, which ran for seven award-winning seasons from 1985 to 1992 and produced two spin-offs.
Through a cultural studies approach, this collection examines a wide range of topics, including race, sexuality, queerness, memory, familial mythmaking, aging, health, and financial precarity. Featuring contributions from an international team of scholars, this book highlights the enduring relevance and cultural impact of the show, even 30 years after its original airing.
Offering fresh insights into its cross-generational and cross-cultural appeal, Down the Road and Back Again is intended for scholars of pop culture and fans of the show.
This is the first book-length study of The Golden Girls, which ran for seven award-winning seasons from 1985-1992 and produced two spin-offs. Offering fresh insights into its cross-generational and cross-cultural appeal, Down the Road and Back Again is intended for scholars of pop culture and fans of the show.
Introduction: Witty, Adult, Intelligent: The Persistent Appeal of The
Golden Girls Part 1: Race, Storytelling, and Queerness: Representation and
Visibility in The Golden Girls
1. Tootie is my favorite: Interrogating the
Responsibility for Antiracist Teaching in The Golden Girls and The Golden
Palace
2. The biggest gift would be from [ Tennessee]: Tennessee Williamss
Influence on TVs Queerest Chosen Family, The Golden Girls
3. Brother of
Dorothy: Phillip Phil Petrillos Imagined Life in Newark, New Jersey in the
1970s and 1980s
4. Queer Engagement and Acceptance in The Golden Girls
5.
Picture It: The Advocacy of Meta-Storytelling in The Golden Girls Part 2:
Isn't it amazing how I can feel so bad, and still look so good?: Sex,
Health, and Bodies
6. Sick and Tired: Dorothy by Gaslight
7. And Then We
Talk About Sex Again: Healthy, Holistic Sex in The Golden Girls
8. Im done
with great love. Im back to great lovers: Sex, Age, and Insecurities with
Samantha Jones and Blanche Devereaux PART 3: The Girls Enduring Legacy:
Fandom and Intertextualities
9. The Golden Girls, Your Friends and Mine: An
Exploration of the Series Enduring Appeal in Fandoms Across Generational
Lines
10. Lessons from Rose and Betty White: Why Generations of Viewers Are
Drawn to the Golden Girl of The Golden Girls
11. The Golden Girls and
Television Comedy Formats: Intertextuality and Designing Women
12. Character
Development through Food Work in The Golden Palace
13. Miami and D.C., Youve
Got Style: The Power of Performance and the Performance of Power in The
Golden Girls and 227
Jill E. Anderson is an Associate Professor of English and Womens Studies at Tennessee State University. She is the author of Homemaking for the Apocalypse: Domesticating Horror in Atomic Age Media and Culture (2021) and the coeditor of Beyond the Haunted House: Shirley Jackson and Domesticity (2020).
Alissa Burger is an Associate Professor of English at CulverStockton College. She teaches courses in research, writing, and literature, specializing in gender, horror, and the Gothic. She is the author of IT, Chapters One & Two (Devils Advocates Series), The Quest for the Dark Tower: Genre and Interconnection in the Stephen King Series (2021), Teaching Stephen King: Horror, the Supernatural, and New Approaches to Literature (2016), and The Wizard of Oz as American Myth: A Critical Study of Six Versions of the Story, 19002007 (2012).
