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Academic Year 2002/2003

Television: The Domestic Medium
ANTH 244 FA

Of all the mass media television is the most intimately associated with domestic and familial life. Most television is watched at home, and the great majority of programs assume a family audience of some kind. The various activities that comprise "watching television" are complexly interwoven with other everyday domestic routines and provide a site for negotiating family roles and relations. The tendency of television producers to imagine potential viewers as belonging to and/or aspiring to form families has also shaped television production in important ways: schedules are designed on the basis of socially conditioned assumptions about family life; television's modes of address include a distinctive, conversational style in which speakers position themselves as family members or guests; families or surrogate families figure prominently in the content of programming across a wide range of genres, including sitcoms, dramas, soaps and talk shows. Historically, television has both responded to and mediated perceived changes in family life. If much of the television produced over the network era was expected to unite family members as viewers in the fragmented contemporary landscape, television also pursues profits by dividing families, with programs designed to appeal to specific family members and/or singles. In this course we will investigate both what viewers do with television in the context of family life and what television does with family, that is, how it has reinforced and reworked social discourses of family as a normative ideal.

MAJOR READINGS

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Unless preregistered students attend the first class meeting or communicate directly with the instructor prior to the first class, they will be dropped from the class list. NOTE: Students must still submit a completed Drop/Add form to the Registrar's Office.

COURSE FORMAT: Lecture/Discussion

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS ANTH    Grading Mode: Graded   

Prerequisites: NONE

SECTION 01

Instructor(s): Traube,Elizabeth G.   

Times: ..T.R.. 10:30AM-11:50AM;     Location: FISK210

Reserved Seats:    (Total Limit: 45)

SR. major: 5   Jr. major: 5

SR. non-major: 2   Jr. non-major: 3   SO: 20   FR: 10

Special Attributes:

Curricular Renewal:    Reading Non-Verbal Texts, Focused Inquiry Course

Last Updated on MAR-18-2003

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