American Television
Offered - Fall, Spring
Course number - LHIS-P237
How did the advent of American popular television in the 1940s change our culture, habits, routines, relationships, ideas, and politics? How does the popularity of "watching" for hours on end change the ways that we understand ourselves and others? How does the saturation of the airwaves with advertisements alter capitalism and influence consumerism? How does television affect our personal, affective, social, and moral lives? How have the representations of race, class, gender, and sexuality on television evolved over the last 75 years? How does television revolutionize our understanding of identity and meaning? In this course, students trace the history of American television from its popular emergence in the 1940s to the present day. Students examine the social history of television in the 20th and 21st centuries and explore the relationship among the tube, the viewer, and society as it has evolved over the last 75 years. Students explore the production of television, the studio networks, marketing and advertising, critical responses to television, satellite and cable television, fashion, celebrity, consumerism, fandom, and genre studies of various kinds of television shows, including network news, sitcoms, dramas, soap operas, serials, game shows, variety shows, reality television, talk shows, teen television, and Saturday morning cartoons. In this course, students will watch American television programming from every decade and will read critical texts from television studies, media studies, cultural studies, sociology, and social history. If you want to think critically about the boob tube-from Howdy Doody to The Golden Girls to Dancing with the Stars-then this is the class for you!
Credits: 3
Course Chair: Darla Hanley
Prerequisites: LENG-111
Required of: None
Electable by: All