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Academic Year 2005/2006

Understanding Television: Industrial System, Cultural Form, and Everyday Life
ANTH 306 SP
Crosslistings:
AMST 306
FILM 306

Understanding television is a multi-faceted 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 US 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; television fandom as an institutional, textual, and audience phenomenon.

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

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.

COURSE FORMAT: Discussion

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

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

Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-30-2006

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