Stephen Groening
Assistant Professor
television studies; screen studies; media convergence; media history
Stephen Groening is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies. He received his doctorate in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society from the University of Minnesota and holds a Master’s degree in Cultural Studies from Claremont Graduate University and a B.A. in 20th Century Literature and Film from Hamilton College.
He is currently working on a book manuscript, Cinema Beyond Territory: InFlight Entertainment and Atmospheres of Globalization, which is an inquiry into two dominant facets of modern life: mobility and visuality. Cinema Beyond Territory takes as its specific objects of analysis the alliance between the global entertainment industry and the global transportation industry, the practices of leisure and productivity in the air carried out by passengers, the aesthetics of passenger jet travel, the intersection of entertainment and aerial disasters, tourism films, media convergence, and the transnational distribution of culture.
Selected Publications
"'We Can See Ourselves as Others See Us': Women Workers and Western Union's Training Films in the 1920s.” in Useful Cinema, edited by Charles Acland and Haidee Wasson, Duke University Press, 2011.
“Automobile Television, the Post-Nuclear Family and SpongeBob SquarePants.” Visual Studies 26 (June 2011): 148-153.
“From ‘A Box in the Theater of the World’ to ‘The World as Your Living Room’: Cellular Phones, Television, and Mobile Privatization." New Media and Society 12 (December 2010): 1331-1347.
“Film in Air: Airspace, In-flight Entertainment and Non-Theatrical Distribution.” Velvet Light Trap 62 (Fall 2008): 4-14.
“Cynicism and Other Post-Ideological Half-Measures in South Park.” in Taking South Park Seriously, edited by Jeffrey Weinstock, State University of New York Press, 2008.
Courses Taught
ENGH 319 Introduction to Television Studies
ENGH 474/670 Surveillance/Cinema/Reality TV