120692 PS Proseminar Cultural and Media Studies (2022W)

In this class we will thoroughly discuss the book Horrible White People. Gender, Genre, and Television’s Precarious Whiteness (2020) by Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey. The authors identify a particular cycle of TV comedies emerging mostly between 2014 and 2016, which feature “well-meaning, floundering, seemingly suffering, self-identifying liberals”, a cycle that further can be defined through “the bleak grimness, black humor, and ethos of failure that unite these disparate comedies in their centering of White precarity” (5).
We will critically examine the key argument, that “even television that is culturally and socially relevant, award-winning prestige TV, technologically innovative, and generically, representationally, and artistically progressive— even that beautiful television—can function to sustain and perpetuate White people’s cultural centrality and power” (3). In order to do so, we will draw on current scholarship on discourses about racism and diversity in the media landscape, whiteness studies and cultural studies more generally.

Moreover we will also use the book as a blueprint to identify and learn how to develop an argument for writing an academic paper in cultural media studies, to see how close textual analysis and conjunctural analysis work in tandem, and how to deal with the pitfalls of such methodologies.

Based on the arguments and concepts discussed in the book and in class, students will form study groups to collaboratively analyze other TV productions. Within these study groups individual proposals for the proseminar papers will be developed. The proposals for individual proseminar papers need to be handed in around mid term and will be briefly presented alongside relevant resources to get early feedback. The longer final presentations of each study group should include the overall structure of the paper, key ideas and examples.

Throughout the semester, students have to prepare and respond to reading and research tasks, and prepare feedback to in-class presentations.

Students who do not have access to Netflix and Amazon Prime need to get in touch to make sure to organize opportunities to watch the shows discussed in class.