Understanding Television: Industrial System, Cultural Form, and Everyday Life
ANTH 306
Fall 2010 not offered
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| Crosslisting:
AMST 306, FILM 306 |
Understanding television is a multifaceted process. It involves institutional analysis of the organizations that produce television programming, interpretation of particular program forms that circulate across space and over time, as well as ethnographic perspectives on viewing practices. This course focuses on U.S. commercial television, with attention to both broadcast and cable industries, and to different moments in the production-text-reception cycle. An overarching concern is to explore how the field of television studies has responded to ongoing changes in the production, distribution, and reception of television. We will critically evaluate an analytic distinction between television and film that initially shaped television studies, and we will examine particular institutional and programming developments that have undermined clear-cut economic or aesthetic distinctions between media. Topics include the glance theory of television viewing; the production of liveness; genre and narrative in film and television; the relation of media conglomerization to audience fragmentation, or niche marketing; different incarnations of quality television and the relations between them; the split between quality and reality programming in contemporary network television; and television fandom as an institutional, textual, and audience phenomenon. |
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Essential Capabilities:
None |
| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS ANTH |
| Course Format: Discussion | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (FILM) |
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