Talking Television in a Time of Crisis, Episode 13: Publics

Our special series “Talking Television in a Time of Crisis” continues with episode 13: Publics. What new viewing publics have been created over the past year? How have such TV publics both connected and disconnected us, particularly in these times of media bubbles, and with what effects?

Host: Swapnil Rai (University of Michigan)
Guest Scholars: Hannah Hamad (Cardiff University), Charlotte Howell (Boston University), Rahul Muhkerjee (University of Pennsylvania), Swapnil Rai (University of Michigan), Mel Stanfill (University of Central Florida)

For more on the participants and on this special series, click here.

Talking Television in a Time of Crisis, Episode 12: Aesthetics

Our special series “Talking Television in a Time of Crisis” continues with Ep. 12: Aesthetics. Questions include: How is television transforming aesthetically, and what new developments in TV form and style have emerged in this time of crisis? How have new forms of television changed our relationship to the TV image?

Host: Nick Salvato [Cornell University]
Guest Scholars: Josie Torres Barth [North Carolina State University], Elana Levine [University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee], Yael Levy [Northwestern University], Jason Mittell [Middlebury College], Isabel Pinedo [Hunter College/CUNY], Nick Salvato [Cornell University]

For more on the participants and on this special series, click here.

Talking Television in a Time of Crisis, Episode 11: Optics

This episode is dedicated to the late Jane Feuer. Find out how to donate to the “Jane Feuer Graduate Student Award” here.

In this episode, Mimi White hosts a conversation on television optics, beginning with discussion of the attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021. Questions include: How does television seek to manage social and political crises around the world? How does television manage its own internal crises (of representation and of legitimation) in such a precarious cultural moment and climate of unrest?

Guest Scholars: Eva Hageman (University of Maryland College Park), Darnell Hunt (UCLA), Melissa Phruksachart (University of Michigan), Brenda Weber (Indiana University), Mimi White (Northwestern University)

For more on the participants and on this special series, click here.

Talking Television in a Time of Crisis, Episode 10: Economics

Episode 10 of our special series “Talking Television in a Time of Crisis” is here: Economics. How has the business of television, from streaming to legacy media, changed in 2020? How can we rethink notions of value in the industry that might contest capitalist modes of production and consumption?

Host: Miranda Banks (Loyola Marymount University)
Guest Scholars: Sarah Banet-Weiser (London School of Economics), Melanie Kohnen (Lewis and Clark College), Al Martin (University of Iowa), and Alisa Perren (University of Texas, Austin).

For more on the participants and on this special series, click here.

Talking Television in a Time of Crisis, Episode 9: Tactics

Our special series “Talking Television” is back for a second season, now as “Talking Television in a Time of Crisis”! In this second episode, we discuss tactics: How can we best analyze and address the power of television, particularly in times of crisis and controversy? How might we define a televisual activism—or is that a contradiction in terms?

Guest Scholars: Jonathan Gray (University of Wisconsin—Madison); Daniel Marcus (Goucher College); Quinn Miller (University of Oregon); Eve Ng (Ohio University); Samantha Sheppard (Cornell University)

For more on the participants and on this special series, click here.

Talking Television in a Time of Crisis, Episode 8: Politics

Our special series “Talking Television” is back for a second season, now as “Talking Television in a Time of Crisis.” In this episode we discuss how television manages, amplifies, and contains our collective anxieties about the election and about other political issues, and we ask: How can we best use television to promote democratic aims?

Guest Scholars:  Matt Delmont [Dartmouth College], Sarah Kessler [University of Southern California], Kayti Lausch [University of Michigan], Roopali Mukherjee [Queens College], Susan Ohmer [University of Notre Dame]

For more on the participants and on this special series, click here.

Talking Television in a Pandemic, Episode 7: Series Summary

The organizers of the ”Talking Television in a Pandemic" series reflect on the previous six episodes, summarize key take-aways from these conversations, and look ahead to the coming months.

Speakers: Hunter Hargraves, Lynne Joyrich, and Brandy Monk-Payton

For more on the participants and on this special series, click here.

Talking Television in a Pandemic, Episode 5: Pedagogy

THE FIFTH IN A SPECIAL FIVE-PART SERIES ON HOW WE ENCOUNTER, ENGAGE WITH, AND TEACH TELEVISION STUDIES IN THE WAKE OF THE GLOBAL PANDEMIC.

How do we teach TV today? What issues are emerging at this moment in the classroom? How has the social context and the virtualization of everyday life shifted the ways in which we reflect on and teach media? What can we do to support the mental and physical health of our students and colleagues, and how might that tie to media themselves? What can we do to ensure that our discipline is supported by university administrators in a time of so much uncertainty about the future of higher education?

Guest scholars: Bambi Haggins, Julia Himberg, Derek Kompare, Jacinta Yanders
Host: Julie Levin Russo

For more on the participants and on this special series, click here.

TALKING TELEVISION IN A PANDEMIC, EPISODE 3: PHENOMENOLOGY

THE THIRD IN A SPECIAL FIVE-PART SERIES ON HOW WE ENCOUNTER, ENGAGE WITH, AND TEACH TELEVISION STUDIES IN THE WAKE OF THE GLOBAL PANDEMIC.

What are the primary affects around and through TV consumption? How has the pandemic (and the protests following the murder of George Floyd) affected the ways in which we consume and critique television? What are our embodied viewing experiences as audiences trapped at home, and how might these experiences speak to new ways of perceiving and understanding TV? What can we learn from existing fan cultures about spectatorial engagement in this time? How has the pandemic affected our collective notions of comfort and discomfort, and how does this shake out across modes of distribution, genre, and style?

Guest Scholars: Hollis Griffin, Suzanne Scott, Karen Tongson, Kristen Warner; Host: Hunter Hargraves

For more on the participants and on this special series, click here.

TALKING TELEVISION IN A PANDEMIC, EPISODE 2: IDEOLOGY

THE SECOND IN A SPECIAL FIVE-PART SERIES ON HOW WE ENCOUNTER, ENGAGE WITH, AND TEACH TELEVISION STUDIES IN THE WAKE OF THE GLOBAL PANDEMIC.

What are the relations between televisual politics and aesthetics, identity and representation, communication and critique? How has the pandemic renewed interest in conversations around TV’s modes of address and how viewers make meaning from particular kinds of programming content? At a time when fraught politics are, one might say, on the very surface of texts today, how should we best deploy and/or aim to transform ideological analysis? This episode includes a special discussion of ideology in relation to the protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Guest scholars: Racquel Gates, Amanda Ann Klein, Juan Llamas Rodriguez, Amy Villarejo

For more on the participants and on this special series, click here.