Literature and culture today: Reading Contemporary American Television: Storytelling, Representation and the Canon

The class provides an introductory overview of the changes taking place over recent decades in television made by and for American television stations, ranging from Quality TV / Third Golden Age of Television in late 1990s, when television series became an increasingly significant form of cultural text, considered worthy of serious academic analysis and critical attention, through domination of cable stations, associated with auteurial television series, to Peak TV, an era when the number of ongoing scripted television series per year has exceeded four hundred, and streaming, associated with binge-watching, continues to supplant network and cable television.

The class aims to broaden and contextualise the students' knowledge concerning one of the dominant forms of early 21st century American culture, namely: scripted television series.

The course consists of an introductory module, familiarising the students with the American television landscape and its changes, the notion of the canon as it may be applied to television studies, and introducing relevant critical and theoretical approaches. The students will learn about generic distinctions and the chronology of selected influential American TV series and the channels/distributors that broadcast them.

Subsequently, the students will learn about selected phenomena associated with contemporary television, such as the rise anti-hero drama, auteurial television series, the influence of societal and political changes (such as the recession or Obama's presidency) on television, discussing representation, changing audiences and various storytelling modes.

Obligatory reading (selected excerpts)

John Fiske. 1989. Television Culture: Popular Pleasures and Politics. London-New York: Routledge.

Amanda Lotz. 2006. Redesigning Women: Television after the Network Era. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Janet McCabe and Kim Akass (eds.) 2007. Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond. London-New York: I.B.Tauris.

Emily Nussbaum. 2019. I Like to Watch. Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution. Random House.

Lillian S. Robinson. 1983. "Treason Our Text: Feminist Challenges to the Literary Canon," Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature,Vol. 2, No. 1.

Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz. TV (The Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time. New York-Boston: Grand Central Publishing.

David Foster Wallace. 1993. "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction , Review of Contemporary Fiction," vol. 13, No. 2.

Moodle materials, including reviews and selected excerpts of TV programmes.

Supplementary Literature:

Amanda Lotz. 2014. Cable Guys. Television and Masculinities in the Twenty-First Century. New York and London: New York University Press.

Brett Martin. 2013. Difficult Men. Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution from The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad. New York: The Penguin Press.

Paul Morris and Sue Thornham. 1999. Media Studies: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Rachel Moseley, Helen Wheatley and Helen Wood (eds.) 2017. Television for Women: New Directions. London-New York: Routledge.

Alan Sepinwall. 2012. The Revolution Was Televised : The Cops, Crooks, Slingers, and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever. Smashwords Publishing.

Assessment of classroom performance and/or Moodle task completion showcasing knowledge of assigned readings documented by the teacher in an activity log. (U1, U2) (30%)

End of semester essay (U2, U3) (70%)

Final paper is assessed with regard to using knowledge gained in class and researched sources, as well as correct essay structure and English lexis and grammar.

Assessment criteria:

satisfactory- (60-69%)

satisfactory plus- (70-75%)

good - (76-83%)

good plus- (84-90%)

very good- (91-100%)

Active participation in classes is obligatory in a laboratory class; therefore, persistent lack of preparation or unexcused absences can lead to a lowered grade or result in a failing grade.

N/A