Fall TV Roundup

19Oct09

October is always a rough month for academics, with the crush of midterm grading, recommendation letter writing, and administrative tasks for spring semester, plus the standard fall tasks for homeowners and parents. But it’s doubly tough for television scholars, as there’s all that new TV to watch! So I’ve been neglecting blogging, but not watching.
While [...]

Filed under: TV Shows, Television   |  11 Comments
Tags: 30 rock, bored to death, community, cougartown, curb your enthusiasm, dollhouse, flash forward, glee, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, modern family, parks & recreation, the good wife, the office

A second look at Lost’s low point

28Sep09

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’m rewatching Lost along with my wife, who is watching for the first time. One of the points in the series I’ve been most looking forward to is the first 6 episodes of season 3 – not because they were my favorite, but because they were my least [...]

Filed under: Narrative, TV Shows, Television   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: Lost

Lostpedia and Wiki Fandom Article

15Sep09

Just a quick pointer to my newest publication: in the new issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, I’ve published “Sites of Participation: Wiki Fandom and the Case of Lostpedia.”Here’s the abstract:
This essay explores the award-winning fan site Lostpedia to examine how the wiki platform enables fan engagement, structures participation, and distinguishes between various forms of [...]

Filed under: Academia, Fandom, New Media, TV Shows, Technology, Television, Viewers   |  2 Comments
Tags: Lost, lostpedia, wiki

Teaching TV, Twitter, and my Textbook

10Sep09

The semester launched this week at Middlebury. Due to a little enrollment shuffling, I’m only teaching one course this semester: Television and American Culture. (I’ll certainly be sufficiently busy reading the hundreds of job applicants and actively working on the college website makeover project!) This is the first time through using my textbook, Television and [...]

Filed under: Academia, Middlebury, TV Textbook, Teaching, Television   |  3 Comments
Tags: twitter

Going Back to the Island

31Aug09

One of my summer projects has been rewatching Lost. When I started the show back in Fall 2004, my wife watched the pilot with me, but found it too creepy for her anti-horror tastes, so I’ve been viewing solo for the past five seasons. I finally convinced Ruth that the show rarely traffics in scares [...]

Filed under: Narrative, TV Shows, Television, Viewers   |  4 Comments
Tags: Lost

Reflections on Teaching The Wire

27Aug09

First, I should indulge in self-promotion to link to this well-done profile of me and the Film & Media Culture program at Middlebury, from the local free weekly, Seven Days. Aside from reminding me of my rapidly graying hair, I’m quite happy with how it turned out!
The author found me first through a link to [...]

Filed under: Academia, Media Studies, Middlebury, Press, TV Shows, Teaching, Television   |  4 Comments
Tags: The Wire

These Questions Need Answers: An essay on the Veronica Mars pilot

10Aug09

On my writing docket this summer were three essays that I’d committed to: a write-up of my SCMS presentation on Lostpedia (which will be coming out in Transformative Works & Cultures this fall), my piece on serial form and memory, and a long-delayed chapter for an anthology about the series Veronica Mars, edited by Sue [...]

Filed under: Media Studies, Narrative, Representations, TV Shows, Television   |  11 Comments
Tags: pilot, Veronica Mars

Tell My Students What TV To Watch

23Jul09

I’m in the midst of drafting another long article, both to feed the blog and meet a lingering book chapter deadline, and head off-the-grid next week for some family vacation. But in the meantime, I’d like to crowdsource some brainstorming for my fall syllabus. I’ll be teaching Television & American Culture, a course I’ve taught [...]

Filed under: Middlebury, Narrative, TV Shows, Teaching, Television   |  37 Comments

More thoughts on soap operas and television seriality

14Jul09

One of my most-clicked (if not read) posts concerns how my approach to prime time serial television relates to the traditional daytime soap opera. Last year I was asked to expand on those ideas via an interview to be included in a forthcoming anthology edited by Sam Ford, Abigail De Kosnik, and C. Lee Harrington, [...]

Filed under: Genre, Narrative, Television   |  1 Comment
Tags: interview, soap opera

Transmedia Storytelling in Television: A Student Thesis

14Jul09

One of the pleasures of working with Middlebury College students is advising independent work on their senior projects. While I don’t have the opportunity to work with graduate students on their dissertations, every once in awhile I have undergraduate students who do exemplary work that feels quite similar to a condensed version of the graduate [...]

Filed under: Media Studies, Middlebury, Narrative, TV Shows, Technology, Television   |  1 Comment
Tags: Lost, transmedia

Previously On: Prime Time Serials and the Mechanics of Memory

03Jul09

As is typical for me at the end of the school year, my to-do list has a pile of publishing projects that I’ve put off to the last minute. So I’ve spent the last month knocking things off the list with general success – I revised an essay on Lostpedia that will be coming out [...]

Filed under: Academia, Media Studies, Narrative, TV Shows, Television, Viewers   |  10 Comments
Tags: Arrested Development, Battlestar, Lost, memory, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Veronica Mars

Picking up Deadwood

22Jun09

One of the challenges of researching contemporary television narrative is time – it simply takes too much of it to watch everything that should be watched. Coupled with my day-to-day responsibilities of teaching, chairing, fathering, reading the internets, and having a life, watching TV can often fall low on the to-do list. (I know I’m [...]

Filed under: Narrative, TV Shows, Television   |  13 Comments
Tags: deadwood, The Wire

The Short Season and Short Asides

13Jun09

I’ve got a few random thoughts that have been piling up without sufficient mass to justify a full post. So here’s a compilation of stuff passing through my mind, Larry King style.
- I’ve not tried to do a full account or analysis of the network upfronts or planned 2009-10 season. But in reading about the [...]

Filed under: TV Industry, TV Shows, Television   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: breaking bad, in treatment, pushing daisies, up

Notes on Serial Forms conference

10Jun09

I spent part of last week on a quick, tiring, but exciting trip to Zurich. I was an invited presenter at University of Zurich’s conference on Serial Forms, a small but well-focused 3-day conference focused on serial narratives across a range of media.
My own presentation was called “Serial Boxes: The Cultural Value of Long-Form American [...]

Filed under: Academia, Media Studies, Narrative, Television   |  1 Comment
Tags: conferences, serial

Settle down about new Buffy film

27May09

The internets have been blazing over the last two days about the reported feature film version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that would not involve Joss Whedon. While I try to not to place this blog in the maelstrom of rumor mongering and fan panic, I’m inspired to take a break from grading to share [...]

Filed under: Film, Film Industry, TV Shows, Television   |  1 Comment
Tags: buffy