How American Sitcoms Create “Realities” About the Working Class
Resources
Below you will find a list of the data we used throughout our research. This is mostly textual data; the links for
video data can be found on the Media & Video page. We provided this list because if you are looking for more
information on American television sitcoms and their portrayals of the working class, the texts cited below are a pretty good
place to start!
Allen, J. "Television's Buffoons and Bigots." 14 May 2008. Socialist Worker. <http://socialistworker.org/2008/05/14/loveable-buffoons>.
Allen, J. (2008, Jun 11). Was Archie Bunker a Middle-Class Fantasy? Socialist Worker, 673. Retrieved from http://socialistworker.org/2008/06/11/archie-bunker.
Alper, L. (Producer), & Alper, L. (Director). (2005). Class Dismissed: How TV Frames the Working Class [DVD]. Northampton, MA: Media Education.
Alston, J. (2007). Too Hot to Handle. Newsweek, 150(5), 54.
Berman, R. (1987). “Sitcoms.” Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Spring, 1987), pp. 5-19.
Bettie, J. "Class Dismissed? Roseanne and the Changing Face of Working-Class Iconography." Social Text (1995): 125-149.
Butsch, R. (1992, Dec 01). Class and gender in four decades of television situation comedy. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 9, 4, 387-399.
Butsch, R. "A Half Century of Class and Gender in American Tv Domestic Sitcoms." Cercles: Revue Pluridisciplinaire Du Monde Anglophone. 8 (2003): 16-34. Print.
Butsch, R. "SOCIAL CLASS AND TELEVISION - The Museum of Broadcast Communications." The Museum of Broadcast Communications. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 May 2012. <http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=socialclass>.
Chaffee, S., & Liberman, D. (2001). The Challenge of Writing the Literature Review. In A. Alexander & W.J. Potter (Eds.) How to Publish Your Communication Research (pp. 30-31). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc.
Dalton, M., and Laura R. Linder. The Sitcom Reader: America Viewed and Skewed. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. Print.
Dines, G., and Jean M. M. Humez. Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Text-Reader. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage, 1995. Print.
Felicia R., L. (2003, November 29). Networking on TV: A Feminine Touch. New York Times. p. 9.
Foss, K. ""You're Gonna Make It After All": Changing cultural norms as described in the lyrics of sitcom theme songs, 1970-2001." Rocky Mountain Communication Review (2008): 43-57.
Freeman, L. "Social Mobility in Television Comedies." Critical Studies in Mass Communication (Annandale, Virginia), 1992.
Glennon, L. and Richard Butsch. "Social Class Frequency Trends in Domestic Situation Comedy, 1946-1978." Journal of Broadcasting (Washington, D.C.), 1983.
Harris, P. "Raising Hope – the sitcom promising a rare look at US working classes." The Guardian . N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2012. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/nov/19/raising-hope-america-working-classes>.
Kendall, D. E. (2005). Framing class: Media Representations of Wealth and Poverty in America. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Kervin, D. "Ambivalent Pleasure from Married... With Children." Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 42 (1990): 42-52.
Lear, N. (Writer), & Campbell, N. (Director). (1972). Archie’s Fraud [Television Episode]. In N. Lear (Producer), All in the Family. Los Angeles, CA: Tandem Productions.
Ozersky, J. (2003). Archie Bunker's America: TV in an era of Change, 1968-1978. Carbondale, Ill: Southern Illinois University Press.
Post-Cold War Working-Class Family Sitcom. Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: the Humanities and Social Sciences, 70, 3, 920.
Raine, A. J. (2011). Lifestyles of the Not So Rich and Famous: Ideological Shifts in Popular Culture, Reagan-Era Sitcoms and Portrayals of the Working Class. ScholarWorks.
Roman, J. W. (2005). From daytime to primetime: The history of American television programs. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press.
Seitz, M.Z. (2011, Jan 12). Why All in the Family Still Matters. Salon. Retrieved from http://www.salon.com/2011/01/12/all_in_the_family/.
Talfinger, R. F. (1996). “Sitcom:” What it is, How it works. <http://public.wsu.edu/~taflinge/sitcom.html#contents>.
Thompson, E. ""I Am Not Down with That": King of the Hill and Sitcom Satire." Journal of Film & Video (2009): 38-51.
Williams, M. D. (2009). Excuse the Mess, but We Live Here: Class, Gender, and Identity in the Post-Cold War Working-Class Family Sitcom. Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: the Humanities and Social Sciences, 70, 3, 920.