Book Cover -- Title -- Contents -- List of contributors -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction Robert C. Allen -- Doubtless to be continued: A brief history of serial narrative Roger Hagedorn -- The role of soap opera in the development of feminist television scholarship Charlotte Brunsdon -- Social issues and realist soaps: A study of British soaps in the 1980s/1990s Christine Geraghty -- National and cultural identity in a Welsh-language soap opera Alison Griffiths -- Global Neighbours? Stephen Crofts -- The end of civilization as we knew it: Chances and the postrealist soap opera Ien Ang and Jon Stratton -- ~I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV~: Charcters, actors and acting in television soap opera Jeremy G. Butler -- Plotting Paternity: Looking for dad on the daytime soaps Laura Stempel Mumford -- ~They killed off Marlena, but she's on another show now~: Fantasy, reality, and pleasure in watching daytime soap operas Louise Spence -- ~There's a queer in my soap!~: The homophobia/AIDS story-line of One Life to Live Joy V. Fuqua -- The consumption of soap opera: The Young and the Restless and mass consumption in Trinidad Daniel Miller -- Not all ~soaps~ are created equal: Toward a cross-cultural criticism of television serials Gabriele Kreutzner and Ellen Seiter -- Our welcomed guests: Telenovelas in Latin America Ana M. Lopez -- Memory and form in the Latin American soap opera Jess Martn-Barbero -- Montezuma's revenge: Reading Los Ricos Tambien Lloran in Russia Kate Baldwin -- The melodrama of national identity in post-Tiananmen China Lisa Rofel -- All in the (Raghu) family: A video epic in cultural context Philip Lutgendorf -- Sacred serials, devotional viewing, and domestic worship: A case-study in the interpretation of two TV versions of The Mahabharata in a Hindu family in west London Marie Gillespie -- Select Bibliography Shari A. Novek.

Index.