Shawn Shimpach | University of Massachusetts Amherst (original) (raw)
Books by Shawn Shimpach
Featuring scholarly perspectives from around the globe and drawing on a legacy of television stud... more Featuring scholarly perspectives from around the globe and drawing on a legacy of television studies, but with an eye toward the future, this authoritative collection examines both the thoroughly global nature of television and the multiple and varied experiences that constitute television in the twenty-first century.
Companion chapters include original essays by some of the leading scholars of television studies as well as emerging voices engaging television on six continents, offering readers a truly global range of perspectives. The volume features multidisciplinary analyses that offer models and guides for the study of global television, with approaches focused on the theories, audiences, content, culture, and institutions of television. A wide array of examples and case studies engage the transforming practices, technologies, systems, and texts constituing television around the world today, providing readers with a contemporary and multi-faceted perspective.
In this volume, editor Shawn Shimpach has brought together an essential guide to understanding television in the world today, how it works and what it means – perfect for students, scholars, and anyone else interested in television, global media studies, and beyond.
From a few national broadcasters to hundreds of digital channels and from a box in the living roo... more From a few national broadcasters to hundreds of digital channels and from a box in the living room to screens of every size, everywhere, television looks and feels very different now. Today television programming must “translate” to different nations, cultures, broadcast systems; different formats, distribution outlets, and screen sizes, while simultaneously attracting and sustaining audience interest over the time it takes to travel through these spaces.
Blending institutional and textual analyses, Television in Transition examines the return to action narratives and (super) heroes intended to navigate this new, international, multi-channel universe. Case studies of Highlander: The Series, Smallville, 24, and Doctor Who call up new questions of political, economic and cultural citizenship, crossing borders, splitting affinities, and pushing boundaries through reinterpretations of long-time televisual representational themes (white masculinity, heroism, nation, genre, etc.) within this era of transformation and perceived industry crisis.
Television in Transition examines the narrative and institutional paradigms of textual afterlife to offer a highly original explanation of how innovation takes place within the television industry’s management of predictability, risk, and familiarity–and what it might mean.
Papers by Shawn Shimpach
Wiley-Blackwell eBooks, Mar 3, 2010
Featuring scholarly perspectives from around the globe and drawing on a legacy of television stud... more Featuring scholarly perspectives from around the globe and drawing on a legacy of television studies, but with an eye toward the future, this authoritative collection examines both the thoroughly global nature of television and the multiple and varied experiences that constitute television in the twenty-first century. Companion chapters include original essays by some of the leading scholars of television studies as well as emerging voices engaging television on six continents, offering readers a truly global range of perspectives. The volume features multidisciplinary analyses that offer models and guides for the study of global television, with approaches focused on the theories, audiences, content, culture, and institutions of television. A wide array of examples and case studies engage the transforming practices, technologies, systems, and texts constituing television around the world today, providing readers with a contemporary and multi-faceted perspective. In this volume, editor Shawn Shimpach has brought together an essential guide to understanding television in the world today, how it works and what it means – perfect for students, scholars, and anyone else interested in television, global media studies, and beyond.
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2016
Having ceased production in 2015, Mad Men is history. It remains, however, an apt example of the ... more Having ceased production in 2015, Mad Men is history. It remains, however, an apt example of the ways in which television has lately been offering a great deal of history through its programming. Television offers accessible and inviting imaginaries of historical periods and events, yet this programming is marked by different theories of historiography and very different assumptions about the role and purpose of history than that which animates the work of scholarly historians. Indeed the gulf between these approaches to history is significant not only for its size, but also for the divide it produces in historical knowledge and, in turn, the ways history can be called upon to inform political decision-making and to influence social practice. The history presented by television, therefore, is important to consider precisely because of the ways it can frame historical discourses and influence assumptions about the role of history. As a touchstone for reconsiderations of 1960s cultural history, Mad Men presented a form of history modeled on the makeover and influenced by an affinity for advertisements. This essay will interrogate the institutional, thematic, and cultural histories of the series itself in order to understand the ways it represented history to its viewers.
Acknowledgments. Introduction: The Time and Space of Television in Transition. 1 Television in Tr... more Acknowledgments. Introduction: The Time and Space of Television in Transition. 1 Television in Transition. 2 The Hero. 3 How to Watch Television. 4 Highlander: The Immortal Cosmopolitan. 5 Smallville: "No Flights, No Tights": Doing Business with Superman. 6 24: In Real Time. 7 Doctor Who: Regeneration through Time and (Relative Dimensions in) Space. Conclusion: Do We Need Another Hero? Notes. References. Index.
ReFocus: The Films of Paul Leni
This chapter considers Universal’s relationship with its audiences at the end of the silent perio... more This chapter considers Universal’s relationship with its audiences at the end of the silent period of Hollywood cinema. Specifically, it presents The Last Warning as a case study and focuses on the ways that Universal promoted this film—a “partial-talkie”—to exhibitors and advertised it to the public. This analysis suggests how Universal imagined the audience for this film and explores the studio’s strategies for connecting the film’s narrative to this imagined audience during the transitional period to synchronised sound. For example, Universal tried to entice exhibitors to book the film by providing survey cards that audience members could fill out during a break in the film’s narrative. The cards would allow them to guess “whodunnit” before the film resumed. Universal therefore engaged in a creative and playful approach to making the film experience more interactive, albeit in a decidedly low-tech way. The studio imagined a specific, rather sophisticated type of audience engageme...
Television New Media, 2002
Television & New Media
New media is of course the great disruptor. So, too, should be its study. Television Studies’ and... more New media is of course the great disruptor. So, too, should be its study. Television Studies’ and Media Studies’ embrace of the “new” and their continuing focus on new media forms, practices, and technologies is not itself anything new. The new has a history and is, in fact, a historically specific category. All media were once new, the new regularly remediates the old, and because the “new” is a product and effect of industrial modernity, there has never been a time when we were not confronted with new media and new technologies. The fact of the history of both new media and its study, therefore, is worth revisiting so that we may be more reflective and skeptical in approaching the latest, newest media things. The implications of unreflective emphasis on the new are only becoming more urgent and the potential for dire consequences increasingly apparent.
Feminist Media Histories
Seeing people as audiences has a history. Our current ways of seeing people are especially indebt... more Seeing people as audiences has a history. Our current ways of seeing people are especially indebted to the conjuncture of Progressive Era reform efforts, the early development of the social sciences, and the transformation of the cinema into a mass medium in the first decades of the twentieth century in the United States. One important convergence of all these historical developments was the Social Survey Movement, which, through its efforts to measure the need for reform, popularized the construction of the modern media audience out of atomized, measurable categorizations of people. The cause of reform at this time was often gendered as feminine for its concerns and its participants, and it was through the gendered labor of the reform movement that "audience" became linked with "data" that could be measured, sorted, and used to produce new forms of knowledge about people. KEYWORDS film audience, Progressive Era, reform movement, silent cinema, Social Survey Movement As Raymond Williams might well have agreed, there are in fact no audiences; there are only ways of seeing people as audiences. 1 The modern media audience is a historical convention derived from specific ways of seeing people. It is indebted to the conjuncture, in the first decades of the twentieth century in the United States, of Progressive Era reform efforts, the early development of the social sciences, and the transformation of the cinema into a mass medium. One important site at which all these historical developments converged was in the era's Social Survey Movement, which, through its efforts to measure the need for reform, ultimately began construction of a recognizable idea of the modern media audience. As the Social Survey Movement encountered motion pictures, it utilized and further developed the latest techniques in social science and statistics to survey, measure, count, aggregate, and broadly publicize data about people attending movies. The audience was produced and ultimately recognized through the data generated and publicized about it-this has become our way of seeing people as an audience.
Feminist Media Histories
Seeing people as audiences has a history. Our current ways of seeing people are especially indebt... more Seeing people as audiences has a history. Our current ways of seeing people are especially indebted to the conjuncture of Progressive Era reform efforts, the early development of the social sciences, and the transformation of the cinema into a mass medium in the first decades of the twentieth century in the United States. One important convergence of all these historical developments was the Social Survey Movement, which, through its efforts to measure the need for reform, popularized the construction of the modern media audience out of atomized, measurable categorizations of people. The cause of reform at this time was often gendered as feminine for its concerns and its participants, and it was through the gendered labor of the reform movement that "audience" became linked with "data" that could be measured, sorted, and used to produce new forms of knowledge about people. KEYWORDS film audience, Progressive Era, reform movement, silent cinema, Social Survey Movement As Raymond Williams might well have agreed, there are in fact no audiences; there are only ways of seeing people as audiences. 1 The modern media audience is a historical convention derived from specific ways of seeing people. It is indebted to the conjuncture, in the first decades of the twentieth century in the United States, of Progressive Era reform efforts, the early development of the social sciences, and the transformation of the cinema into a mass medium. One important site at which all these historical developments converged was in the era's Social Survey Movement, which, through its efforts to measure the need for reform, ultimately began construction of a recognizable idea of the modern media audience. As the Social Survey Movement encountered motion pictures, it utilized and further developed the latest techniques in social science and statistics to survey, measure, count, aggregate, and broadly publicize data about people attending movies. The audience was produced and ultimately recognized through the data generated and publicized about it-this has become our way of seeing people as an audience.
Nightingale/The Handbook of Media Audiences, 2011
I collaborated with my former film professor, Shawn Shimpach, to write a chapter on the role of r... more I collaborated with my former film professor, Shawn Shimpach, to write a chapter on the role of representation of out-groups in the media. We cover this issue based on contemporary diversity reports from the film and television industries and discuss the ramifications of representation both in terms of communication and psychology.
This chapter was included in a large encyclopedia curated and edited by Dr. Robert Rycroft at the University of Mary Washington. The full textbook is currently in press.
The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, 2012
Having ceased production in 2015, Mad Men is history. It remains, however, an apt example of the ... more Having ceased production in 2015, Mad Men is history. It remains, however, an apt example of the ways in which television has lately been offering a great deal of history through its programming. Television offers accessible and inviting imaginaries of historical periods and events, yet this programming is marked by different theories of historiography and very different assumptions about the role and purpose of history than that which animates the work of scholarly historians. Indeed the gulf between these approaches to history is significant not only for its size, but also for the divide it produces in historical knowledge and, in turn, the ways history can be called upon to inform political decision-making and to influence social practice. The history presented by television, therefore, is important to consider precisely because of the ways it can frame historical discourses and influence assumptions about the role of history. As a touchstone for reconsiderations of 1960s cultural history, Mad Men presented a form of history modeled on the makeover and influenced by an affinity for advertisements. This essay will interrogate the institutional, thematic, and cultural histories of the series itself in order to understand the ways it represented history to its viewers.
Featuring scholarly perspectives from around the globe and drawing on a legacy of television stud... more Featuring scholarly perspectives from around the globe and drawing on a legacy of television studies, but with an eye toward the future, this authoritative collection examines both the thoroughly global nature of television and the multiple and varied experiences that constitute television in the twenty-first century.
Companion chapters include original essays by some of the leading scholars of television studies as well as emerging voices engaging television on six continents, offering readers a truly global range of perspectives. The volume features multidisciplinary analyses that offer models and guides for the study of global television, with approaches focused on the theories, audiences, content, culture, and institutions of television. A wide array of examples and case studies engage the transforming practices, technologies, systems, and texts constituing television around the world today, providing readers with a contemporary and multi-faceted perspective.
In this volume, editor Shawn Shimpach has brought together an essential guide to understanding television in the world today, how it works and what it means – perfect for students, scholars, and anyone else interested in television, global media studies, and beyond.
From a few national broadcasters to hundreds of digital channels and from a box in the living roo... more From a few national broadcasters to hundreds of digital channels and from a box in the living room to screens of every size, everywhere, television looks and feels very different now. Today television programming must “translate” to different nations, cultures, broadcast systems; different formats, distribution outlets, and screen sizes, while simultaneously attracting and sustaining audience interest over the time it takes to travel through these spaces.
Blending institutional and textual analyses, Television in Transition examines the return to action narratives and (super) heroes intended to navigate this new, international, multi-channel universe. Case studies of Highlander: The Series, Smallville, 24, and Doctor Who call up new questions of political, economic and cultural citizenship, crossing borders, splitting affinities, and pushing boundaries through reinterpretations of long-time televisual representational themes (white masculinity, heroism, nation, genre, etc.) within this era of transformation and perceived industry crisis.
Television in Transition examines the narrative and institutional paradigms of textual afterlife to offer a highly original explanation of how innovation takes place within the television industry’s management of predictability, risk, and familiarity–and what it might mean.
Wiley-Blackwell eBooks, Mar 3, 2010
Featuring scholarly perspectives from around the globe and drawing on a legacy of television stud... more Featuring scholarly perspectives from around the globe and drawing on a legacy of television studies, but with an eye toward the future, this authoritative collection examines both the thoroughly global nature of television and the multiple and varied experiences that constitute television in the twenty-first century. Companion chapters include original essays by some of the leading scholars of television studies as well as emerging voices engaging television on six continents, offering readers a truly global range of perspectives. The volume features multidisciplinary analyses that offer models and guides for the study of global television, with approaches focused on the theories, audiences, content, culture, and institutions of television. A wide array of examples and case studies engage the transforming practices, technologies, systems, and texts constituing television around the world today, providing readers with a contemporary and multi-faceted perspective. In this volume, editor Shawn Shimpach has brought together an essential guide to understanding television in the world today, how it works and what it means – perfect for students, scholars, and anyone else interested in television, global media studies, and beyond.
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2016
Having ceased production in 2015, Mad Men is history. It remains, however, an apt example of the ... more Having ceased production in 2015, Mad Men is history. It remains, however, an apt example of the ways in which television has lately been offering a great deal of history through its programming. Television offers accessible and inviting imaginaries of historical periods and events, yet this programming is marked by different theories of historiography and very different assumptions about the role and purpose of history than that which animates the work of scholarly historians. Indeed the gulf between these approaches to history is significant not only for its size, but also for the divide it produces in historical knowledge and, in turn, the ways history can be called upon to inform political decision-making and to influence social practice. The history presented by television, therefore, is important to consider precisely because of the ways it can frame historical discourses and influence assumptions about the role of history. As a touchstone for reconsiderations of 1960s cultural history, Mad Men presented a form of history modeled on the makeover and influenced by an affinity for advertisements. This essay will interrogate the institutional, thematic, and cultural histories of the series itself in order to understand the ways it represented history to its viewers.
Acknowledgments. Introduction: The Time and Space of Television in Transition. 1 Television in Tr... more Acknowledgments. Introduction: The Time and Space of Television in Transition. 1 Television in Transition. 2 The Hero. 3 How to Watch Television. 4 Highlander: The Immortal Cosmopolitan. 5 Smallville: "No Flights, No Tights": Doing Business with Superman. 6 24: In Real Time. 7 Doctor Who: Regeneration through Time and (Relative Dimensions in) Space. Conclusion: Do We Need Another Hero? Notes. References. Index.
ReFocus: The Films of Paul Leni
This chapter considers Universal’s relationship with its audiences at the end of the silent perio... more This chapter considers Universal’s relationship with its audiences at the end of the silent period of Hollywood cinema. Specifically, it presents The Last Warning as a case study and focuses on the ways that Universal promoted this film—a “partial-talkie”—to exhibitors and advertised it to the public. This analysis suggests how Universal imagined the audience for this film and explores the studio’s strategies for connecting the film’s narrative to this imagined audience during the transitional period to synchronised sound. For example, Universal tried to entice exhibitors to book the film by providing survey cards that audience members could fill out during a break in the film’s narrative. The cards would allow them to guess “whodunnit” before the film resumed. Universal therefore engaged in a creative and playful approach to making the film experience more interactive, albeit in a decidedly low-tech way. The studio imagined a specific, rather sophisticated type of audience engageme...
Television New Media, 2002
Television & New Media
New media is of course the great disruptor. So, too, should be its study. Television Studies’ and... more New media is of course the great disruptor. So, too, should be its study. Television Studies’ and Media Studies’ embrace of the “new” and their continuing focus on new media forms, practices, and technologies is not itself anything new. The new has a history and is, in fact, a historically specific category. All media were once new, the new regularly remediates the old, and because the “new” is a product and effect of industrial modernity, there has never been a time when we were not confronted with new media and new technologies. The fact of the history of both new media and its study, therefore, is worth revisiting so that we may be more reflective and skeptical in approaching the latest, newest media things. The implications of unreflective emphasis on the new are only becoming more urgent and the potential for dire consequences increasingly apparent.
Feminist Media Histories
Seeing people as audiences has a history. Our current ways of seeing people are especially indebt... more Seeing people as audiences has a history. Our current ways of seeing people are especially indebted to the conjuncture of Progressive Era reform efforts, the early development of the social sciences, and the transformation of the cinema into a mass medium in the first decades of the twentieth century in the United States. One important convergence of all these historical developments was the Social Survey Movement, which, through its efforts to measure the need for reform, popularized the construction of the modern media audience out of atomized, measurable categorizations of people. The cause of reform at this time was often gendered as feminine for its concerns and its participants, and it was through the gendered labor of the reform movement that "audience" became linked with "data" that could be measured, sorted, and used to produce new forms of knowledge about people. KEYWORDS film audience, Progressive Era, reform movement, silent cinema, Social Survey Movement As Raymond Williams might well have agreed, there are in fact no audiences; there are only ways of seeing people as audiences. 1 The modern media audience is a historical convention derived from specific ways of seeing people. It is indebted to the conjuncture, in the first decades of the twentieth century in the United States, of Progressive Era reform efforts, the early development of the social sciences, and the transformation of the cinema into a mass medium. One important site at which all these historical developments converged was in the era's Social Survey Movement, which, through its efforts to measure the need for reform, ultimately began construction of a recognizable idea of the modern media audience. As the Social Survey Movement encountered motion pictures, it utilized and further developed the latest techniques in social science and statistics to survey, measure, count, aggregate, and broadly publicize data about people attending movies. The audience was produced and ultimately recognized through the data generated and publicized about it-this has become our way of seeing people as an audience.
Feminist Media Histories
Seeing people as audiences has a history. Our current ways of seeing people are especially indebt... more Seeing people as audiences has a history. Our current ways of seeing people are especially indebted to the conjuncture of Progressive Era reform efforts, the early development of the social sciences, and the transformation of the cinema into a mass medium in the first decades of the twentieth century in the United States. One important convergence of all these historical developments was the Social Survey Movement, which, through its efforts to measure the need for reform, popularized the construction of the modern media audience out of atomized, measurable categorizations of people. The cause of reform at this time was often gendered as feminine for its concerns and its participants, and it was through the gendered labor of the reform movement that "audience" became linked with "data" that could be measured, sorted, and used to produce new forms of knowledge about people. KEYWORDS film audience, Progressive Era, reform movement, silent cinema, Social Survey Movement As Raymond Williams might well have agreed, there are in fact no audiences; there are only ways of seeing people as audiences. 1 The modern media audience is a historical convention derived from specific ways of seeing people. It is indebted to the conjuncture, in the first decades of the twentieth century in the United States, of Progressive Era reform efforts, the early development of the social sciences, and the transformation of the cinema into a mass medium. One important site at which all these historical developments converged was in the era's Social Survey Movement, which, through its efforts to measure the need for reform, ultimately began construction of a recognizable idea of the modern media audience. As the Social Survey Movement encountered motion pictures, it utilized and further developed the latest techniques in social science and statistics to survey, measure, count, aggregate, and broadly publicize data about people attending movies. The audience was produced and ultimately recognized through the data generated and publicized about it-this has become our way of seeing people as an audience.
Nightingale/The Handbook of Media Audiences, 2011
I collaborated with my former film professor, Shawn Shimpach, to write a chapter on the role of r... more I collaborated with my former film professor, Shawn Shimpach, to write a chapter on the role of representation of out-groups in the media. We cover this issue based on contemporary diversity reports from the film and television industries and discuss the ramifications of representation both in terms of communication and psychology.
This chapter was included in a large encyclopedia curated and edited by Dr. Robert Rycroft at the University of Mary Washington. The full textbook is currently in press.
The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, 2012
Having ceased production in 2015, Mad Men is history. It remains, however, an apt example of the ... more Having ceased production in 2015, Mad Men is history. It remains, however, an apt example of the ways in which television has lately been offering a great deal of history through its programming. Television offers accessible and inviting imaginaries of historical periods and events, yet this programming is marked by different theories of historiography and very different assumptions about the role and purpose of history than that which animates the work of scholarly historians. Indeed the gulf between these approaches to history is significant not only for its size, but also for the divide it produces in historical knowledge and, in turn, the ways history can be called upon to inform political decision-making and to influence social practice. The history presented by television, therefore, is important to consider precisely because of the ways it can frame historical discourses and influence assumptions about the role of history. As a touchstone for reconsiderations of 1960s cultural history, Mad Men presented a form of history modeled on the makeover and influenced by an affinity for advertisements. This essay will interrogate the institutional, thematic, and cultural histories of the series itself in order to understand the ways it represented history to its viewers.
The Routledge Companion to Global Popular Culture
The American basic cable channel HGTV became the object of public scorn after the housing market ... more The American basic cable channel HGTV became the object of public scorn after the housing market became associated with the current and ongoing global financial crisis. While noting the ways in which this channel’s programming has been complicit in the financialization of home ownership and the effacement of risk that continue to transform “dwelling” into “home” into “investment,” this article takes the occasion of enmity foisted on HGTV as an opportunity to more broadly consider the complex role of representation—or in the language of these programs, the role of “staging” —in and as part of the economic crisis. The links between complex and often abstract forms of financial speculation and the ideology of home ownership are not as direct as they were portrayed in the aftermath of the crisis. The staging of real estate in HGTV’s programming and the staging of economic practices offer two simultaneous and parallel, but distinct, practices of representation. Just as recently developing approaches to conducting the ethnography of financial markets have begun to suggest new ways of thinking about the work done in and by the economy, grounded in material practices, so too do we need to take seriously the complexity of the work done by textual representation in our understanding of political economies. Yes, through crisis we found that these practices are linked, but not directly or causally. HGTV programming does not offer confirmation or reification of the link between representational games of financial speculation and those of home owners. It is not the site of culture that has led to economic crisis, but rather a telling site of the culture of crisis.