History & Criticism

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...

Historian Sara Eskridge examines television's rural comedy boom in the 1960s and the political, social, and economic factors that made these shows a perfect fit for CBS. The network, nicknamed the Communist Broadcasting System during the Red Scare of the...

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, ...

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...

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...

Television Drama offers an account of British television drama from its origins in live studio drama in the prewar and immediate postwar years, through the Golden Age of the single play in the 1960s and 1970s, to its convergence with an emerging British...

Our understanding of history is often mediated by popular culture, and television series set in the past have provided some of our most indelible images of previous times. Yet such historical television programs always reveal just as much about the era...

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...

Although it lasted barely more than a season, Dollhouse continues to intrigue viewers as one of Joss Whedon's most provocative forays into television. The program centered on men and women who have their memories and personalities repeatedly wiped and...

The American Indian has figured prominently in many films and television shows, portrayed variously as a villain, subservient friend, or a hapless victim of progress. Many Indian stereotypes that were derived from European colonial discourse-some...

Over the past decade, television talk shows have proliferated and diversified in style. One of the most demonized of television genres, talk shows have fueled debates about television's faltering role as a medium for social interaction. Overlooked in all...

As television emerged as a major cultural and economic force, many imagined that the medium would enhance civic education for topics like science. And, indeed, television soon offered a breathtaking banquet of scientific images and ideas - both factual...

Prestige Television explores how a growing array of 21st century US programming is produced and received in ways that elevate select series above the competition in a saturated market. Contributing authors demonstrate that these shows are positioned and...

The past decade has seen an explosion of lifestyle makeover TV shows. Audiences around the world are being urged to 'renovate' everything from their homes to their pets and children while lifestyle experts on TV now tell us what not to eat and what not...

With a breadwinner dad, a homemaker mom, and squeaky-clean kids, the 1950s television family has achieved near mythological status as a model of what real families "ought" to be. Yet feature films of the period often portrayed families in trouble, with...

The 1950s was one of the most turbulent periods in the history of motion pictures and television. During the decade, as Hollywood's most powerful studios and independent producers shifted into TV production, TV replaced film as America's principal...

With the explosion of reality television onto screens and schedules worldwide, this timely and original book explores makeover tv, the ubiquitous reality format that has received little critical attention to date. Top writers and scholars take discussion...

'Little Britain' arrived on British TV in 2003 - and was an instant hit. Matt Lucas and David Walliams wrote and performed, and their sharp satirical genius created this character-based sketch show - Vicky Pollard, Dafydd 'I'm the only gay in the...

In Citizen Spy, Michael Kackman investigates how media depictions of the slick, smart, and resolute spy have been embedded in the American imagination. Looking at secret agents on television and the relationships among networks, producers, government...

In TV Socialism, Aniko Imre provides an innovative history of television in socialist Europe during and after the Cold War. Rather than uniform propaganda programming, Imre finds rich evidence of hybrid aesthetic and economic practices, including...

Beginning in the 1930s and moving into the post millennium, this book provides a historical analysis of the policies and practices established by the BBC as it attempted to assist white Britons in adjusting to the presence of African-Caribbeans. Among...

A fascinating deep-dive into how shows from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to The Equalizer have changed the way women are portrayed on television.The last three decades of television have been a formative and progressive time for female characters, as...

Focuses on binge-watching and its role in contemporary television studies Includes original research from different sub-fields of television studies Develops a nuanced understanding of binge-watching by exploring it from the perspectives of fan...

A history of prestige television through the rise of the "black-market melodrama." In Second Lives, Michael Szalay defines a new television genre that has driven the breathtaking ascent of TV as a cultural force over the last two decades: the...

We all have images that we find unwatchable, whether for ethical, political, or sensory and affective reasons. From news coverage of terror attacks to viral videos of police brutality, and from graphic horror films to transgressive artworks, many of the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781550228885Author Ted NichelsonFormat PaperbackPage Count 340Imprint ECW Press,CanadaPublisher ECW Press,CanadaWeight(grams) 1078g

Fanvids, or vids, are short videos created in media fandom. Made from television and film sources, they are neither television episodes nor films; they resemble music videos but are non-commercial fanworks that construct creative and critical analyses of...

The author of the acclaimed Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them) brings "her singular sensibility, her genius for language, her love of our deeply imperfect world" (Karen Karbo, author of In Praise of Difficult Women) to this insightful...

It is no coincidence that presidential candidates have been making it a point to add the late-night comedy circuit to the campaign trail in recent years. In 2004, when John Kerry decided it was time to do his first national television interview, he did...

From mindfulness in schools to meditation apps, mental health is bursting out of the psychiatrist's chair and into our everyday conversations. As awareness of mental health increases, so does its predominance in popular culture, which makes for a...

Programming Reality: Perspectives on English-Canadian Television, the first anthology dedicated to analyses of Canadian television content, is a collection of original, interdisciplinary articles, combining textual analysis and political economy of...

Our understanding of history is often mediated by popular culture, and television series set in the past have provided some of our most indelible images of previous times. Yet such historical television programs always reveal just as much about the era...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781869408572Author Smith JoFormat PaperbackPage Count 240Imprint Auckland University PressPublisher Auckland University Press

How the baby boomers learned about the world in their most formative yearsHow the baby boomers learned about the world in their most formative yearsAbout the AuthorEric Burns is a cultural historian and former television journalist. He was named by the...

Now if I just remembered where I put that original TV play device--the universal remote control . . .Television is a global industry, a medium of representation, an architectural component of space, and a nearly universal frame of reference for viewers...

This comprehensive textbook, now substantially updated for its fourth edition, provides students with a framework for understanding the key concepts and main approaches to Television Studies, including audiences, representation, industry and global...

This is the first book that examines how "ethnic spectacle" in the form of Asian and Latin American bodies played a significant role in the cultural Cold War at three historic junctures: the Korean War in 1950, the Cuban Revolution in 1959, and the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780814255599Author Frederick Luis AldamaFormat PaperbackPage Count 208Imprint Ohio State University PressPublisher Ohio State University PressWeight(grams)...

Accolades such as "the best TV show of the twentieth century" or "the longest-running scripted series on American prime-time television" have elevated The Simpsons to the pop culture pantheon, while also suggesting the very vintage character of the...

Professional football is one of the most popular television 'genres' worldwide, attracting the support of millions of fans, and the sponsorship of powerful companies. In A Game of Two Halves, Sandvoss considers football's relationship with television,...