36:065 Television Criticism

Prerequisite: 36:001

Description

This course teaches students to analyze television using a media criticism approach. This approach incorporates a variety of different methods for interpreting the social, cultural, and political meaning of television. Students learn about a range of critical approaches, including text-based, audience-based, institutional and cultural approaches to television criticism. Students will also apply critical methods to primary television texts.

Objectives

At the end of the semester, students should be able to do the following:

• Understand the concepts and vocabulary used in media criticism
• Discriminate between different types of critical approaches
• Apply a range of critical methods to the interpretation of television texts
• Analyze television from textual, audience-oriented, institutional and cultural perspectives

Possible Texts

Butler, Jeremy G. (2002) Television: Critical methods and applications. (2nd Ed.) Belmont, CA: Wadsworth

Casey, B. M. (2002). Television studies: the key concepts. New York : Routledge.

Metallinos, N. (1996). Television Aesthetics: Perceptual, cognitive, and compositional bases. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Newcomb, Horace (Ed). (2000). Television: The critical view. (6th Ed.). NY: Oxford

Potter, W. James (1998). Media Literacy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Vande Berg, L. Wenner, L. and Gronbeck, B. (Eds.). (1998). Critical approaches to television. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Assignments

• Exams to test for concepts, vocabulary and discrimination between approaches
• Small group criticism projects
• Television criticism bibliography and article analysis
• Independent criticism project

Workload

45 pages of textbook reading per week; outside reading for article analysis and criticism project

Other resources:

The Broadcast Education Association Syllabus Project: http://www.beaweb.org/syllabus/crit.html

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