Convergence Media History / Edition 1

by Janet Staiger, Sabine Hake

Overview

Convergence Media History explores the ways that digital convergence has radically changed the field of media history. Writing media history is no longer a matter of charting the historical development of an individual medium such as film or television. Instead, now that various media from blockbuster films to everyday computer use intersect regularly via convergence, scholars must find new ways to write media history across multiple media formats. This collection of eighteen new essays by leading media historians and scholars examines the issues today in writing media history and histories. Each essay addresses a single medium—including film, television, advertising, sound recording, new media, and more—and connects that specific medium’s history to larger issues for the field in writing multi-media or convergent histories. Among the volume’s topics are new media technologies and their impact on traditional approaches to media history; alternative accounts of film production and exhibition, with a special emphasis on film across multiple media platforms; the changing relationships between audiences, fans, and consumers within media culture; and the globalization of our media culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415996624
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/22/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Janet Staiger is William P. Hobby Centennial Professor of Communication in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. The author of many books, her latest include Media Reception Studies, Blockbuster TV: Must-See Sitcoms in the Network Era, and Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception.

Sabine Hake is Professor and Texas Chair of German Literature and Culture at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Topographies of Class: Urban Architecture and Mass Utopia in Weimar Berlin, German National Cinema, and Popular Cinema of the Third Reich, among many other books.

Table of Contents

List of Figures viii

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xii

Part 1 New Methods 1

1 From Accented Cinema to Multiplex Cinema Hamid Naficy 3

2 Franchise Histories: Marvel, X-Men, and the Negotiated Process of Expansion Derek Johnson 14

3 When Pierre Bourdieu Meets the Political Economists: RKO and the Leftists-in-Hollywood Problematic Chris Cagle 24

4 Touch, Taste, Breath: Synaesthesia, Sense Memory, and the Selling of Cigarettes on Television, 1948-1971 Marsha F. Cassidy 34

5 Rewiring Media History: Intermedial Borders Mark Williams 46

Part II New Subjects 57

6 Provincial Modernity? Film Exhibition at the 1907 Jamestown Exposition Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley 59

7 Exhibition in Mexico During the Early 1920s: Nationalist Discourse and Transnational Capital Laura Isabel Serna 69

8 The Recording Industry's Role in Media History Kyle S. Barnett 81

9 Forging a Citizen Audience: Broadcasting from the 1920s through the 1940s Richard Butsch 92

10 Bobby Jones, Warner Bros., and the Short Instructional Film Harper Cossar 102

Part III New Approaches 115

11 Bonding with the Crowd: Silent Film Stars, Liveness, and the Public Sphere Sue Collins 117

12 The Comfort of Carnage: Neorealism and America's World Understanding Karl Schoonover 127

13 "Talk About Bad Taste": Camp, Cult, and the Reception of What's New Pussycat? Ken Feil 139

14 Selling Out, Buying In: Brakhage, Warhol, and BAVC Dan Leopard 151

15 Whatever Happened to the Movie-of-the-Week? [The Shocking True Story of How Made-For-TV Movies Disappeared from the Broadcast Networks] Alisa Perren 161

Part IV Research Issues 171

16 Doing Soap Opera History: Challenges and Triumphs Elana Levine 173

17 Stalking the Wild Evidence: Capturing Media History Through Elusive and Ephemeral Archives Pamela Wilson 182

18 Historicizing Web Design: Software, Style, and the Look of the Web Megan Sapnar Ankerson 192

Bibliography on Media Historiography 204

List of Contributors 208