We will study writings on television and specific TV shows from a variety of angles to understand the rise of American broadcast technologies, how race and class are crafted on TV, representations of gender and the home, postmodernity and late capitalism, the rise and demise and of taste, global television and the public sphere, the production of “reality” in our present historical moment, and changes in televisual technologies. Throughout the course, we will also consider what constitutes television—the technology, the form, and the content—and learn to read these three facets of it concurrently.