ENGH 371: Television Studies

ENGH 371-A01: Television Studies
(Summer 2014)

01:30 PM to 03:20 PM MTWR

Thompson Hall 2021

Section Information for Summer 2014

Television has become the preeminent communications system in the world.  But pervasiveness and ubiquity are not the only reasons to study television.  Television calls into question many long-held ideas regarding aesthetics, ontology, and epistemology; terms normally reserved for philosophy, not the mass media.  Additionally, television is embelmatic of modern industrial society; pointing to capitalism as a global system.  Television can also be conceived as mindless, entertaining, and superficial even as it creates communities, national imaginaries and seem to bring the world into our homes.  This course will examine some of these contradictions.  We will explore what television is, what television does, and how television shapes our fundamental assumptions about space, time, image and sound.  This course will emphasize television's place in a larger historical context of other media forms, consumerism, and modernity.

Tags:

Course Information from the University Catalog

Credits: 3

Learn to identify and analyze formal elements of television. Learn how to situate and evaluate television in their cultural and historical contexts, interpret specific texts, and understand the relationships among broadcasting and networks, citizenship, audiences, and the public sphere. Limited to three attempts.
Mason Core: Arts
Recommended Prerequisite: Satisfaction of University requirements in 100-level English and in Mason Core literature.
Schedule Type: Lecture
Grading:
This course is graded on the Undergraduate Regular scale.

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