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Symposium: Issues in RTVF (398-0-20)

Topic

Television for Women

Instructors

Miriam B White

Meeting Info

Louis Hall 119: Tues, Thurs 3:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

This class will look at the development of popular television genres aimed at women, as well as women-oriented cable channels (notably Lifetime and Hallmark). We will start with feminist work on the daytime soap opera, and move into more contemporary formations of women's television. This class is intended to counter the immense reverence with which shows that center toxic masculinity are treated by popular and academic television critics, and to remind everyone that women were looking at and writing about long-form serial melodrama long before men started making prime-time dramas in that format.

Teaching Method

The class will include a weekly screening of some form of so-called women's television programming, readings on the same, and then discussion of the program we watched and the readings that accompany it.