40-3212 Critical Studies: Television

Course seeks to master methods of analysis that get beneath TV: historic and industrial, auteurism and genre, semiotics and psychoanalysis, postmodern, and ideological. Television is the primary source for the transmission of information, politics, entertainment, and our collective and dispersed cultures in the United States, surpassing even film and newspaper because of its combined accessibility and visual appeals. Further, TV has for decades now shaped how we tell and understand stories about the worlds we live in and those we hope to live in, from notions of race and gender to presidents and child-rearing. In students’ aspirations to become professionals in the field of television, understanding how TV operates culturally and socially in a sophisticated manner will ultimately make them better creative artists, producers, managers, screenwriters, etc.! We work from the premise that there is no such thing as just TV, for certainly the industry wouldn’t survive if everyone really could care less about what they watch.

3 Credits Repeatable
WI
PREREQUISITES: 52-1122 International Writing and Rhetoric II or 52-1152 Writing and Rhetoric II
Requirements 32 Completed Credit Hour