History & Criticism

From 9/11 to COVID-19, the twenty-first century looks increasingly dystopian-and so do its television shows. Long-form science fiction narratives take one step further the fears of today: liberal democracy in crisis, growing economic precarity, the...

Alan Schroeder's big-picture history recounts the phenomenon of American televised presidential debates and its evolution over the past half century. From pundits to political operatives, from debate moderators to the viewing public, Presidential Debates...

Alan Schroeder's popular history now covers the 2000 Bush-Gore and 2004 Bush-Kerry debates, including innovations in format and press coverage, and adds new research on televised debates since 1960. Schroeder organizes his book according to a television...

What is meant by an 'independent' television and press, and what affirmative role should any government have in the regulation of television? How do competing interest groups use media regulation to their advantage? What impact does television have on...

The 1970s was a golden age for representations of African American life on TV sitcoms: Sanford & Son, Good Times, The Jeffersons. Surprisingly, nearly all the decade’s notable Black sitcoms were made by a single company, Tandem Productions. Founded by...

The 1970s was a golden age for representations of African American life on TV sitcoms: Sanford & Son, Good Times, The Jeffersons. Surprisingly, nearly all the decade’s notable Black sitcoms were made by a single company, Tandem Productions. Founded by...

Between 1995 and 2000, the number of music videos airing on MTV dropped by 36 percent. As an alternative to the twenty-four-hour video jukebox the channel had offered during its early years, MTV created an original cycle of scripted reality shows,...

Using rhetorical criticism as a research method, Public Memory, Relational Dialectics, and the TV Series Outlander examines how public memory is created in the first four seasons of the popular television show Outlander. In this book, Valerie Lynn...

This text offers exploration, based on case studies, of television's complex formative period - the 1950s. It discusses television's role in the construction of national and gender identities and its relation to other media such as theatre, film and...

Mothers on American television takes an in-depth look at how motherhood is represented on some of the most popular television series produced this century. Adopting a feminist, Marxist, cultural studies and psychoanalytical approach, the book offers a...

During the course of its three seasons, Veronica Mars captured the attention of fans and academics alike. The 12 scholarly essays in this collection examine the show's most compelling elements. Topics covered include vintage television, the search for...

Following her success with Playboy Swings , Patty Farmer looks at Playboy's relationship with comedians and cartoonists in her new book Playboy Laughs . Playboy Laughs invites readers onto the sets of the organization's groundbreaking TV shows, ...

In late-sixteenth-century London, the commercial theaters undertook a novel experiment, fueling a fashion for plays that trafficked in the contemporary urban scene. But beyond the stage's representing the everyday activities of the expanding metropolis,...

This collection is the first to offer a genuinely interdisciplinary approach to Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue, a ten-film cycle of modern tales that touch on the ethical dilemmas of the Ten Commandments. The cycle's deft handling of moral ambiguity...

The birth and development of commercial television in Cuba in the 1950s occurred alongside political and social turmoil. In this period of dramatic swings encompassing democracy, a coup, a dictatorship, and a revolution, television functioned as a beacon...

During the latter half of the 1980s and throughout the 1990s, television talk shows, infotainment news, and screaming supermarket headlines became ubiquitous in America as the "tabloidization" of the nation's media took hold. In Tabloid Culture Kevin...

Since the show's debut in 2007, Mad Men has invited viewers to immerse themselves in the lush period settings, ruthless Madison Avenue advertising culture, and arresting characters at the center of its 1960s fictional world. Mad Men, Mad World is a...

The popularity of television in postwar suburban America had a devastating effect on the traditional Hollywood studio system. Yet many aging Hollywood stars used television to revive their fading careers. In Recycled Stars, Mary R. Desjardins examines...

In Screening Culture, Viewing Politics Purnima Mankekar presents a cutting-edge ethnography of television-viewing in India. With a focus on the responses of upwardly-mobile, yet lower-to-middle class urban women to state-sponsored entertainment serials,...

The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom examines the evasive depictions of sexuality in domestic and family-friendly sitcoms. Tison Pugh charts the history of increasing sexual depiction in this genre while also unpacking how sitcoms use...

A reporter for the Los Angeles Times once noted that "I Love Lucy is said to be on the air somewhere in the world 24 hours a day." That Lucy's madcap antics can be watched anywhere at any time is thanks to television syndication, a booming global...

A reporter for the Los Angeles Times once noted that "I Love Lucy is said to be on the air somewhere in the world 24 hours a day." That Lucy's madcap antics can be watched anywhere at any time is thanks to television syndication, a booming...

Survivor. The Bachelor. Extreme Makeover. Big Brother. Joe Millionaire. American Idol. The Osbournes. It is virtually impossible to turn on a television without coming across some sort of reality programming. Yet, while this genre has rapidly moved from...

Winner of the 2009 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Katherine Singer Kovacs Book Award The Midwest of popular imagination is a "Heartland" characterized by traditional cultural values and mass market dispositions. Whether cast positively -; as...

Nickelodeon is the highest rated daytime channel in the country, and its cultural influence has grown at an astounding pace. Why are Nickelodeon shows so popular? How are they developed and marketed? And where do they fit in the economic picture of the...

In 2009, 16 and Pregnant premiered on MTV, closely followed by the spinoffs Teen Mom and Teen Mom 2. Because of their controversial portrayals of teenage mothers, the shows have received ongoing media attention. While some argue that the programs could...

This book examines the representation of blackness on television at the height of the southern civil rights movement and again in the aftermath of the Reagan-Bush years. In the process, it looks carefully at how television's ideological projects with...

In 1990, American television experienced a seismic shift when Twin Peaks premiered, eschewing formulaic plots and clear lines between heroes and villains. This game-changing series inspired a generation of show creators to experiment artistically,...

Commercial television deserves praise for its many achievements, but since its earliest days, almost everyone has agreed that it is also open to many criticisms. The Texas-Stanford Seminars, made possible by a grant from TV Guide magazine, were intended...

The millions of fans who watch World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) programs each year are well aware of their role in building the narrative of the sport. #WWE: Professional Wrestling in the Digital Age explores the intersections between media,...

In Media in Postapartheid South Africa, author Sean Jacobs turns to media politics and the consumption of media as a way to understand recent political developments in South Africa and their relations with the African continent and the world. Jacobs...

Why is talk about television forbidden at certain schools? Why does a mother feel guilty about watching Star Trek in front of her four-year-old child? Why would retired men turn to daytime soap operas for entertainment? Cliches about television mask the...

Over recent decades, the flow of television programmes and services between nations has prompted concerns about `Cultural Imperialism', the idea that the powerful metropolitan nations at the centre of the world system are breaking down the integrity and...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9788773076231Author Gunhild AggerFormat HardbackPage Count 396Imprint Aalborg UniversitetsforlagPublisher Aarhus University PressWeight(grams) 893g

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781904764182Author Ernest MathijsFormat PaperbackPage Count 256Imprint Wallflower PressPublisher Wallflower PressWeight(grams) 552gDimensions(mm) 231mm *...

This book is the first written by a film specialist to consider Stephen King's television work in its own right, and rejects previous attempts to make the films and books fit rigid thematic categories. Browning examines what makes a written or visual...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781841501475Author Solange DavinFormat PaperbackPage Count 128Imprint Intellect BooksPublisher Intellect Books

A fun and accessible guide to foreign television series that were later broadcast in or adapted for the US, including popular favorites such as The Office and Doctor Who. In Broadcast in the US: Foreign TV Series Brought to America, Vincent Terrace...

Television conveys powerful messages about sexual identities, and popular shows such as Will & Grace, Ellen, Glee, Modern Family, and The Fosters are often credited with building support for gay rights, including marriage equality. At the same time,...

Since the debut of These Are My Children in 1949, the daytime television soap opera has been foundational to the history of the medium as an economic, creative, technological, social, and cultural institution. In Her Stories, Elana Levine draws on...