Understanding Television: Industrial System, Cultural Form, and Everyday Life
ANTH 306
Spring 2008 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) |
Major Readings:
Todd Gitlin, INSIDE PRIME TIME
Robert Thompson, TELEVISION'S SECOND GOLDEN AGE: FROM HILL STREET BLUES TO ER
John Thornton Caldwell, TELEVISUALITY: STYLE, CRISIS, AND AUTHORITY IN MODERN TELEVISION
Toby Miller, TELEVISION STUDIES
Mark Jancovich and James Lyons, QUALITY POPULAR TELEVISION
Sam Brenton and Reuben Cohen, SHOOTING PEOPLE: ADVENTURES IN REALITY TV
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Examinations and Assignments:
Students are to keep a weekly research journal; there will be one or two short papers, a class presentation, and a final research paper. |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
INTERVIEW REQUIRED. Students seeking admission must schedule an interview with the instructor to determine their eligibility. For each class there will be several hours of required television viewing of pretaped shows. |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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