Television History The Peabody Archive And Cultural Memory

"Television History, The Peabody Archive, and Cultural Memory is the product of a multiyear collaboration between the Peabody Awards program and over a dozen media scholars with the intent to uncover, explore, and analyze historical television programming contained in the Peabody Awards archives at the University of Georgia. It is an intentional effort to look both wider and deeper than the well-known canon of U.S. broadcast history that dominates popular memory of the relationship of television to American society. The Peabody Archive is especially suited to this project because it is an archive of programming produced and submitted not just by the big networks in New York or Los Angeles, but by stations and media producers across the nation and, more recently, around the world. This project asks, how might these programs change our understanding of television's past, and impact the ways we think about television's present and future? What new questions can we ask and what new approaches should we take as a result of seeing and experiencing this programming? The contributions in this volume offer a dramatic range of approaches for how scholars can productively engage the archive's media and physical holdings to examine and reconsider television history"--

Television History, the Peabody Archive, and Cultural Memory is the first edited volume devoted to the Peabody Awards Collection, a unique repository of radio and TV programs submitted yearly since 1941 for consideration for the prestigious Peabody Awards. The essays in this volume explore the influence of the Peabody Awards Collection as an archive of the vital medium of TV, turning their attention to the wealth of programs considered for Peabody Awards that were not honored and thus have largely been forgotten and yet have the potential to reshape our understanding of American television history. Because the collection contains programming produced by stations across the nation, it is a distinctive repository of cultural memory; many of the programs found in it are not represented in the canon that dominates our understanding of American broadcast history. The contributions to this volume ask a range of important questions. What do we find if we look to the archive for what’s been forgotten? How does our understanding of gender, class, or racial representations shift? What different strategies did producers use to connect with audiences and construct communities that may be lost? This volume’s contributors examine intersections of citizenship and subjectivity in public-service programs, compare local and national coverage of particular individuals and social issues, and draw our attention to types of programming that have disappeared. Together they show how locally produced programs—from both commercial and public stations—have acted on behalf of their communities, challenging representations of culture, politics, and people.

In TV Snapshots, Lynn Spigel explores snapshots of people posing in front of their television sets in the 1950s through the early 1970s. Like today’s selfies, TV snapshots were a popular photographic practice through which people visualized their lives in an increasingly mediated culture. Drawing on her collection of over 5,000 TV snapshots, Spigel shows that people did not just watch TV: women used the TV set as a backdrop for fashion and glamour poses; people dressed in drag in front of the screen; and in pinup poses, people even turned the TV setting into a space for erotic display. While the television industry promoted on-screen images of white nuclear families in suburban homes, the snapshots depict a broad range of people across racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds that do not always conform to the reigning middle-class nuclear family ideal. Showing how the television set became a central presence in the home that exceeded its mass entertainment function, Spigel highlights how TV snapshots complicate understandings of the significance of television in everyday life.

A new edition that brings the ways we watch and think about television up to the present We all have opinions about the television shows we watch, but television criticism is about much more than simply evaluating the merits of a particular show and deeming it “good” or “bad.” Rather, criticism uses the close examination of a television program to explore that program’s cultural significance, creative strategies, and its place in a broader social context. How to Watch Television, Second Edition brings together forty original essays—more than half of which are new to this edition—from today’s leading scholars on television culture, who write about the programs they care (and think) the most about. Each essay focuses on a single television show, demonstrating one way to read the program and, through it, our media culture. From fashioning blackness in Empire to representation in Orange is the New Black and from the role of the reboot in Gilmore Girls to the function of changing political atmospheres in Roseanne, these essays model how to practice media criticism in accessible language, providing critical insights through analysis—suggesting a way of looking at TV that students and interested viewers might emulate. The contributors discuss a wide range of television programs past and present, covering many formats and genres, spanning fiction and non-fiction, broadcast, streaming, and cable. Addressing shows from TV’s earliest days to contemporary online transformations of the medium, How to Watch Television, Second Edition is designed to engender classroom discussion among television critics of all backgrounds. To access additional essays from the first edition, visit the full list here bit.ly/HowToWatchTV2e.

“Seeing Mad” is an illustrated volume of scholarly essays about the popular and influential humor magazine Mad, with topics ranging across its 65-year history—up to last summer’s downsizing announcement that Mad will publish less new material and will be sold only in comic book shops. Mad magazine stands near the heart of post-WWII American humor, but at the periphery in scholarly recognition from American cultural historians, including humor specialists. This book fills that gap, with perceptive, informed, engaging, but also funny essays by a variety of scholars. The chapters, written by experts on humor, comics, and popular culture, cover the genesis of Mad; its editors and prominent contributors; its regular features and departments and standout examples of their contents; perspectives on its cultural and political significance; and its enduring legacy in American culture.

Bringing together leading scholars from around the world and across scholarly disciplines, this collection of 32 original chapters provides a comprehensive exploration of the relationships between cities and media. The volume showcases diverse methods for studying media and the city and posits "media urbanism" as an approach to the co-construction and interactions among media texts and technologies, media users, media industries, media histories, and urban space. Chapters serve as a guide to humanities-based ways of studying urban imaginaries, infrastructures and architectures, development and redevelopment, and strategies and tactics as well as a provocation toward new lines of inquiry that further explore the dense interconnectedness of media and cities. Structured thematically, the chapters are organized into four distinct sections, introduced with editorial commentary that places the chapters into conversation with each other and frames them in relation to an overarching question, problem, or method. Part I: Imaginaries and cityscapes focuses on screen representations and mediated experiences of urban space produced and consumed by various actors; Part II: Architectures and infrastructures highlights the different ways in which built environments and socio-technical substrates that sustain differential mobilities, urban rhythms, and systems of circulation and exchange are intertwined with various forms of media and mediation; Part III: Development and redevelopment examines efforts by urban planners and designers, municipal governments, and community organizers to utilize media forms to imagine and shape the construction of the space and meaning of the city; finally, Part IV: Strategies and tactics uses categories for practices of control and resistance to investigate media and struggles for power within urban environments from surveillance and place-branding to activist media and the right to the city. The Routledge Companion to Media and the City provides a definitive reference for both scholars and students of urban cultures and media within the humanities.

Introduction Breaking the News, Chicago Style -- The Storm before the Storm -- Day One: "If the Democratic Party can't be democratic, what hope is there for democracy?" -- Day Two: "We filibustered with Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum matters until the American people had gone to bed." -- Day Three: "You do what's right, you don't have to give a worry about the television medium." -- Day Four: "Maybe this is a kiss-and-make-up session, but it's not really intended quite that way, Mayor Daley." -- The Storm after the Storm -- Conclusion From Biased News to Fake News.

This work examines what happens when comedy becomes political, and politics become funny. A series of original essays focus on a range of programmes, from 'The Daily Show' to 'South Park'.