Generic transgressions: Gender, genre, and hybridity in American science fiction televisio

"Generic Transgressions: Gender, Genre, and Hybridity in American Science Fiction Television" focuses on the influence of genre hybridity on the portrayal of gender in contemporary science fiction (SF) television series. This project explores the connections between genre, postmodernism, and gender in the current television climate, focusing on the use of what are traditionally "masculine" genres (westerns, war films, cop shows, and action shows) to realign gender roles in SF/speculative shows. Whereas many SF series through the 1980s relegated women to the margins of their stories---allowing female characters to exist only in positions that confirmed patriarchal dominance---SF television in the last twenty years has grown progressively more open to the critique of patriarchal systems, imagining futures comprised of non-normative portrayals of gender and sexuality.;Though there is still a tendency towards creating shows built around current patriarchal systems, SF genre-hybrids series such as Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009), Firefly (2002-2003), The X-Files (1993-2002), and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008-2009) do offer transgressive possibilities for looking at gender and sexuality on television. This project addresses three major aspects of each of these series: their evolution from previous SF and genre television series, their respective genre hybridity (both in terms of genre and storytelling form), and the ramifications of this genre hybridity for sexuality and gender. The first part of the dissertation situates these series within the existing literature and critique of SF and sexuality, and the bulk of the project addresses the series as "hybrid" texts and discusses the influence of hybridity on portrayals of sexuality and gender. By examining these four series, I argue that hybridizing SF with what have long been considered "masculine" genres works to create spaces for transgressive depictions of female characters on mainstream television.