Abstract
This chapter considers the broader implications of the “as literature” approaches to television embraced in this book by examining the “academic canonization” of other media within the humanities—the process by which art forms become accepted areas of study. “As literature” approaches could suggest that the academic canonization of Television Studies within the humanities is still very much in process. However, the recent rise in scholarship pointing out the problems with such approaches also suggests that the academic study of television series is entering an important next stage of academic canonization, when it will no longer need to rely on other more established art forms for legitimization.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Aarseth, Espen. 2001. “Computer Game Studies, Year One.” Game Studies 1 (1) (July): n.p.
Aldama, Frederick Luis. 2018. “Comic Studies Here and Now: An Introduction.” In Comic Studies Here and Now, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama, 1–6. New York: Routledge.
Anders, Charlie Jane. 2015. “The Whole Crazy Process of Creating a TV Show, from Pitch to Pilot.” io9.com, January 23, https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-do-so-many-tv-shows-get-greenlit-but-then-never-1681405688.
Anderson, Christopher. 2008. “Producing an Aristocracy of Culture in American Television.” In The Essential HBO Reader, edited by Gary R. Edgerton and Jeffrey P. Jones, 23–41. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.
Beaty, Bart. 2017. “Some Classics.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Graphic Novel, edited by Steven Tabachnick, 175–191. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316258316.013.
Bellis, Rich. 2013. “Which Literary Works Explain Breaking Bad Best?” The Atlantic, October 2, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/10/which-great-literary-work-explains-em-breaking-bad-em-best/280149/.
Buhle, Paul. 2003. “The New Scholarship of Comics.” The Chronicle Review, May 16, https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-New-Scholarship-of-Comics/36438.
Butler, Catherine. 2014. “Introduction.” In Modern Children’s Literature: An Introduction, edited by Catherine Butler and Kimberley Reynolds, 1–8. London: Red Globe Press.
Carroll, Noël. 1985. “The Specificity of Media in the Arts.” The Journal of Aesthetic Education 19 (4) (Winter): 5–20. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3332295.
Casetti, Francesco. 2007. “Adaptation and Mis-adaptations: Film, Literature, and Social Discourses.” In A Companion to Literature and Film, edited by Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo, 81–91. Malden, MA: Wiley.
Chute, Hillary. 2008. “Comics as Literature? Reading Graphic Narrative.” PMLA 123 (2) (March): 452–465.
Dunleavy, Trisha. 2017. Complex Serial Drama and Multiplatform Television. New York: Routledge.
Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Simon, Jonas Heide Smith, and Susana Pajares Tosca. 2013. Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
Fiske, John. 2004. Reading Television. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
Gronbeck, Bruce E. 1988. “Book Reviews: The Academic Practice of Television Criticism.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 74: 334–347.
Hambrick, Donald C., and Ming-Jer Chen. 2008. “New Academic Fields as Admittance-Seeking Social Movements: The Case of Strategic Management.” Academy of Management Review 33 (1): 32–54.
Hilmes, Michele. 1994. “Born Yesterday: Television and the Academic Mind.” American Literary History 6 (4) (Winter): 792–802.
———. 2005. “The Bad Object: Television in the American Academy.” Cinema Journal 45 (1) (Autumn): 111–117.
James, Caryn. 2001. “‘Sopranos’: Blood, Bullets and Proust.” The New York Times, March 2, https://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/movies/tv-weekend-sopranos-blood-bullets-and-proust.html.
———. 2004. “The Television Show That Thinks It’s a Novel.” The New York Times, September 19, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/19/arts/television/the-television-show-that-thinks-its-a-novel.html.
Kompare, Derek. 2011. “Filling the Box: Television in Higher Education.” Cinema Journal 50 (4) (Summer): 161–165.
Kozloff, Sarah. 1992. “Narrative Theory and Television.” In Channels of Discourse, Reassembled: Television and Contemporary Criticism, edited by Robert C. Allen, 67–100. New York: Routledge.
Lavik, Erlend. 2011. “The Poetics and Rhetoric of The Wire’s Intertextuality.” Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies 6 (1): 52–71.
Levine, Elana. 2008. “Distinguishing Television: The Changing Meanings of Television Liveness.” Media, Culture & Society 30 (3): 393–409. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443708088794.
Loman, Andrew. 2010. “‘That Mouse’s Shadow’: The Canonization of Spiegelman’s Maus.” The Rise of the American Comics Artist: Creators and Context, edited by Paul Williams and James Lyons, 210–234. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Martin, Tim. 2009. “How Comic Books Became Part of the Literary Establishment.” Telegraph.co.uk, April 2, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/5094231/How-Comic-Books-became-part-of-the-literary-establishment.html
McCabe, Janet, and Kim Akass. 2008. “It’s Not TV, It’s HBO’s Original Programming: Producing Quality TV.” In It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-Television Era, edited by Marc Leverette, Brian L. Ott, and Cara Louise Buckley, 83–94. New York: Routledge.
McGrath, Charles. 1995. “The Triumph of the Prime-Time Novel.” The New York Times, October 22, https://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/22/magazine/the-prime-time-novel-the-triumph-of-the-prime-time-novel.html.
Metcalf, Greg. 2012. The DVD Novel: How the Way We Watch Television Changed the Television We Watch. Santa Barbara: Praeger.
Mittell, Jason. 2013. “Forensic Fandom and the Drillable Text.” Spreadable Media, http://spreadablemedia.org/essays/mittell/. Accessed 26 January 2020.
———. 2015. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York University Press.
Newcomb, Horace. 2005. “The Development of Television Studies.” In A Companion to Television, edited by Janet Wasko, 15–28. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Newman, Michael Z., and Elana Levine. 2012. Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status. New York: Routledge.
Nussbaum, Emily. 2009. “When TV Became Art.” New York Magazine, December 2, http://nymag.com/arts/all/aughts/62513/.
Parrott, Billy. 2012, “The ‘Mad Men’ Reading List.” NYPL.org, February 27, https://www.nypl.org/blog/2012/02/27/mad-men-reading-list.
Pizzino, Christopher. 2016. Arresting Development: Comics at the Boundaries of Literature. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Polan, Dana. 2007. “Cable Watching: HBO, The Sopranos, and Discourses of Distinction.” In Cable Visions: Television beyond Broadcasting, edited by Sarah Banet-Weiser, Cynthia Chris, and Anthony Freitas, 261–283. New York: New York University Press.
———. 2008. “Young Art, Old Colleges: Early Episodes in the American Study of Film.” In Inventing Film Studies, edited by Lee Grieveson and Haidee Wasson, 93–117. Durham: Duke University Press.
Schneider, Michael. 2019. “100 Most-Watched TV Shows of 2018–19: Winners and Losers.” Variety.com, May 22, https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/most-watched-tv-shows-highest-rated-2018-2019-season-game-of-thrones-1203222287/.
Shuster, Martin. 2017. New Television: The Aesthetics and Politics of a Genre. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Smith, Matthew J., and Randy Duncan (eds.). 2017. The Secret Origins of Comics Studies. New York: Routledge.
Staiger, Janet. 1985. “The Politics of Film Canons.” Cinema Journal 24 (3) (Spring): 4–23. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1225428.
Steirer, Gregory. 2011. “The State of Comics Scholarship: Comics Studies and Disciplinarity.” International Journal of Comic Art 13 (2) (Fall): 263–285.
Stuart, Sarah Clarke. 2011. Literary Lost: Viewing Television Through the Lens of Literature. New York: Continuum.
Thomas, Michael M. 2001. “Like Ibsen or Dickens, Sopranos Is Our Peak.” Observer, June 4, https://observer.com/2001/06/like-ibsen-or-dickens-sopranos-is-our-peak/.
Thurm, Eric. 2017. “It’s Not Prestige, It’s Just TV.” Esquire.com, April 27, https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a54762/the-flaws-of-prestige-tv/.
VanArendonk, Kathryn. 2017. “13 Signs You’re Watching a ‘Prestige’ TV Show.” Vulture.com, March 28, https://www.vulture.com/2017/03/prestige-tv-signs-youre-watching.html.
Weisberg, Jacob. 2006. “The Wire on Fire: Analyzing the Best Show Ever Broadcast on American Television.” Slate.com, September 13, https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2006/09/the-wire-the-best-tv-show-ever-broadcast-on-american-television.html.
Wells-Lassagne, Shannon. 2017. Television and Serial Adaptation. New York: Routledge.
Woodward, Ellie. 2018. “24 Movies That Are Actually Better Than the Book They’re Based On.” Buzzfeed, September 28, https://www.buzzfeed.com/elliewoodward/movies-that-are-actually-better-than-the-book
“Yale’s Big Break.” 2013. Yale News, April 5, https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2013/04/05/yales-big-break/.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Renner, K.J. (2021). “As Literature” Approaches and the Academic Canonization of Television Studies. In: Winckler, R., Huertas-Martín, V. (eds) Television Series as Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4720-1_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4720-1_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-15-4719-5
Online ISBN: 978-981-15-4720-1
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)