American Television Cultures 4219-RS283
This course provides an introduction to American television culture with a focus on (1) how it is distinct from other national televisual cultures, (2) how it has changed over time with changing technological affordances and political economic structures, and (3) the dominance of the American medium on the form of global television as it has emerged in the twenty-first century. We will read a range of material from the field of television studies to consider the medium’s history, aesthetics, genre forms, and funding structures. Our screening will include a range of single episodes from series to consider key series in the history of US television, as well as selected case studies to explore specific series in more detail as exemplars of US cultural politics. These case study series will focus on narrative television specifically to consider the role of television as a medium that shapes popular understandings and reflects the ideological assumptions underpinning US public life.
The course will include discussion of the specific of television as a medium, looking at its history as it emerged out of radio, through broadcast and cable eras, to conclude with a discussion of the streaming era to ask whether television has faded as a cultural form with the end of mass media dominance or, on the contrary, whether television has becomes generalized as the dominant narrative aesthetic that shapes streaming and social media forms today. It will include instruction on the specific style and form that has emerged as distinction of television, in contrast to the aesthetics of film, even as we consider the degree to which such distinctions of form bur in an age of streaming media. Although the course is not production based, it will include some discussion of televisual industries and modes of production, the better to understand how these materialities shape the kinds of narratives we see. We will spend some time discussing televisual audiences, both from a fan studies point of view to examine the interchanges between the industry and fans in a context that Henry Jenkins has characterized as “spreadable media,” and form the point of view of audience demographics to consider how issues of gender, race, sexual orientation, and class identity intersect with television across its history. We will conclude with a brief consideration of the reception of American television beyond the US and what that suggests about both the medium and about structures of cultural hegemony today
Type of course
elective courses
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
Upon completing this course, a student will have the following:
KNOWLEDGE
• Understanding of the significant of television as a mass medium form that has had a significant impact on American public discourse.
• Ability to identify and explain the significance of key series in American televisual history.
• Awareness of the key theorists in television studies, define the terminology they have developed for the medium, and use these and related terms from visual cultural analysis to provide close readings of scenes and episodes.
• Narrate the history of television as it developed in the United States, as distinct from the medium as it developed in other national contexts.
• Explain how technology, political economy, and narrative form have changed over televisual history in the United States, including an analysis of how these three factors interact with one another.
SKILLS
• Ability to formulate a range of critical arguments about American television as a medium and about individual series as distinct texts which show how larger conversations about American values, identities, and histories have been mediated through television.
• Fluency with a range of critical approaches to television studies as a discipline, including industry analyses, media-specific criticism, close reading of visual culture, and political economic critique.
• Capacity to develop a research project specific to the medium of television in its US context that can draw on appropriate research methods to analyze television as both a medium and a specific televisual series as an ideological text
• Capacity to theorize how American television has changed over the medium’s history with reference to political economic, technological, and social context as drivers of change
• Ability to link influential series in US television history to contemporary political issues as they shaped the political public sphere
SOCIAL COMPETENCES
• Skill with using the interdisciplinary knowledge gained in the course to formulate their own opinions about the political effects of television culture within and beyond the US
• Ability to conduct research in the field to further enhance
• An awareness of how American television has changed with a changing overall media landscape and an ability to use their knowledge to analyze new changes in this media landscape and their impact on sociopolitical discourse in the public sphere
• An understanding of why television is an influential and important cultural medium within the context of American culture and in terms of the global influence of American televisual culture in the streaming age
Assessment criteria
Students will complete the following assignments:
1. research paper proposal
2. annotated bibliography
3. seminar presentation
4. research paper
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: