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Academic Year 2005/2006

Television: The Domestic Medium
ANTH 244 FA

Of all the mass media television is the most intimately associated with domestic and familial life. Its installation in American homes over the postwar decade coincided with a revival of family life that encouraged an emphasis on private over public leisure. Most television is watched at home, and the activities that comprise "watching television" are interwoven with everyday domestic routines and provide a site for negotiating family roles and relations. Television production is shaped by producers' images of the domestic lives of viewers: schedules are designed on the basis of socially conditioned assumptions about the gendered division of family roles; television's modes of address include a distinctive, conversational style in which performers present themselves as members or friends of the viewer's family; families or surrogate families figure prominently in the content of programming across a wide range of genres, including sitcoms, dramas, soaps and talk shows. Sitcoms, in particular, have responded to and mediated shifts in family forms and they will be a focus in this course. We will explore how television has drawn on and contributed to cultural discourses about family life over the past 50 years.

MAJOR READINGS

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

COURSE FORMAT: Lecture

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: 50)

SR. major: 2   Jr. major: 3

SR. non-major: 15   Jr. non-major: 15   SO: 15   FR: 0

Special Attributes:

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

Last Updated on MAR-30-2006

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