Film & Media Studies 382 - Television & Experience

Fall
2017
01
4.00
Amelie Hastie
TTH 02:30PM-03:50PM
Amherst College
FAMS-382-01-1718F
FAYE 115
ahastie@amherst.edu
ENGL-384-01,FAMS-382-01

(Offered as ENGL 384 and FAMS 382)  As one of our most dominant, even omnipresent media forms, television is something most of us experience every day.  But Television Studies scholarship does not always take on the question of “experience” as a central part of its analysis.  This course will take experience as the central component of our study.  The first unit of the course will consider phenomenological approaches to television criticism, centering on those elements of televisual form that delineate an experience different from other media.  Our second unit will focus on historical experience, with an emphasis on Civil Rights era television, African-American productions and/or stars, and African-American audiences.  Our third and final unit will consider the platforms and devices through which we experience television in order to query how “television experience” changes over time and what elements of it have remained constant.  The course will blend lecture and discussion.  Readings will be both theoretical and historical.  Students will produce regular reading summaries, two formal essays, and a digital final project.


Some previous coursework in FAMS may be useful.  Not open to first-year students. Limited to 35 students.  Fall semester.  Professor Hastie.

Permission is required for interchange registration during the add/drop period only.