Module description
In various ways-from its "quality" to its cultural influence, from time spent watching it to the number of sets in our homes-many people would argue that television is the unsurpassed media form of contemporary culture. Recent studies indicate that the average Briton will spend nearly a decade of their life watching TV, while the average American watches 35 hours of television per week. This module will introduce students to critical approaches to understanding television's significance as a pervasive part of popular culture and everyday life since the introduction of commercial network programming into homes in the 1940s. We will focus on developing a critical vocabulary for discussing the forms, flows, aesthetics, and representations of televisual style and programming, reading a sampling of important work by scholars who have contributed to the emergence of “television studies” as a dynamic field of study. Readings will span television history, theory, and criticism, accounting for a range of methodological approaches that understand the medium in a critical fashion. We will especially focus on examining the social and cultural impacts of television—how it has shaped and been shaped by our desires and anxieties, particularly in terms of gender, race, and class. The goal of this module will be to give students a set of tools through which they can watch television with a greater critical awareness of the medium’s ubiquity and history; its formal properties and technological apparatus; the politics of its representations; its industrial formations; and its unknown but changing futures. In different years, there might be different regional or thematic foci.
We will focus on developing a critical vocabulary for discussing the forms, flows, aesthetics, and representations of televisual style and programming, reading a sampling of important work by scholars who have contributed to the emergence of “television studies” as a dynamic field of study. Readings will span television history, theory, and criticism, accounting for a range of methodological approaches that understand the medium in a critical fashion. We will especially focus on examining the social and cultural impacts of television—how it has shaped and been shaped by our desires and anxieties, particularly in terms of gender, race, and class in America. The goal of this module will be to give students a set of tools through which they can watch television with a greater critical awareness of the medium’s ubiquity and history; its formal properties and technological apparatus; and the politics of its representations; its industrial formations; and its unknown but changing futures. Although there will be many points of intersection and overlap, the module will be roughly divided into four units that investigate television from different perspectives: (1) television as discourse; (2) representation and identity; (3) media historiographies and ethnographies; (4) reality TV and global media.
Assessment details
- Participation - attendance and seminar discussion (5%)
- 750 Word Exercise (20%)
- 750 Word Exercise (20%)
- Essay 2000 words (45%)
- Group Project (presentation and book report) 10%
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module, students will be able to demonstrate intellectual, transferable and practicable skills appropriate to a Level 5 module and in particular will be able to:
-Demonstrate a systematic understanding of major debates within scholarship on television that complement their training in film studies
-Identify key concepts and theoretical frameworks central to the critical study of race, gender, and class and be able to apply them to the analysis of television and popular culture;
- Compare and evaluate the critical stakes of different approaches to the study of television
- Effectively synthesize and reflect on the multi-faceted nature of television as a medium, insofar as it intersects with politics, discourse and the public sphere; identity and representation; and transnational flows of ideas and culture
-Design and undertake original research into specific aspects of television, including an assignment that methodologically expands upon textual analysis to include modes of research that are more ethnographic in nature