Talking Television in a Time of Crisis, Ep. 11: Optics →

Episode 11 of our special series “Talking Television in a Time of Crisis” is here: Optics. 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?

This conversation is hosted by Mimi White (Northwestern University) and features Eva Hageman (University of Maryland College Park), Darnell Hunt (UCLA), Melissa Phruksachart (University of Michigan), and Brenda Weber (Indiana University).

This episode is dedicated to the late Jane Feuer

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Talking Television in a Time of Crisis, Ep. 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)

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Episode 52: Reality Matters

In the depths of winter, we take you to warm, sunny Italy! Our intrepid host Chris Becker, apparently unsure how to order “pizza” in Italian, nonetheless bravely heads to Matera in order to talk with documentarians Chiara Ferrari and Quinn Winchell about cultural tourism in Matera (the setting for films from James Bond to Passion of the Christ). We then re-air the 2014 Fieldnotes segment with influential film scholar Thomas Elsaesser, who passed away in December, 2019. Finally, Michael and Chris banter about the year in media and politics, including the role of universities in social justice activism.

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