ENGL 232-002: Television Studies: Forms of Watching – Kevin McNeilly

Approaches to Media Studies
Term 2
MWF, 2:00 – 3:00 p.m.

The form and function of television continues to shift radically; the transformation – some would say the death – of network TV and the emergence of media platforms such as YouTube or the PVR, alongside menu-driven multichannel flows and on-line archives such as Netflix or Hulu, have altered both what and how we watch in North America, and globally. Studying a selective set of American television dramas and comedies, we will explore a variety of critically-informed approaches to television viewing and viewership, uncovering various means of reflecting on and assessing how we consume contemporary mass media. Primary viewing will include episodes of Star Trek, The Carol Burnett Show, Kung Fu, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Freaks and Geeks, Mad Men, Adventure Time, and Miranda Sings. Our critical reference text will be the most recent edition of Television Studies: The Key Concepts (Routledge). The course will be organized around a set of media concepts and critical tropes linked to the study of television: flow, screen, encoding/decoding, corporealities, audience (publics and counterpublics, fandoms), text and script, technology and materialism, commodification, archive and memory, globalization. Assignments for the course will include a viewing blog, a brief YouTube-style video, a short formal analysis, a critical research essay and a final examination.