Television Histories

by Edgerton, Gary R.; Rollins, Peter C.

• ISBN13: 9780813190563
• ISBN10: 0813190568
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-05-23
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Kentucky

Summary

Winner of the 2001 Ray and Pat Browne National Book Award for Outstanding Textbook, given by the Popular Culture Association From Ken Burns's documentaries to historical dramas such as Roots, from A&E's Biography series to CNN, television has become the primary source for historical information for tens of millions of Americans today. Why has television become such a respected authority? What falsehoods enter our collective memory as truths? How is one to know what is real and what is imagined -- or ignored -- by producers, directors, or writers? Gary Edgerton and Peter Rollins have collected a group of essays that answer these and many other questions. The contributors examine the full spectrum of historical genres, but also institutions such as the History Channel and production histories of such series as The Jack Benny Show, which ran for fifteen years. The authors explore the tensions between popular history and professional history, and the tendency of some academics to declare the past "off limits" to nonscholars. Several of them point to the tendency for television histories to embed current concerns and priorities within the past, as in such popular shows as Quantum Leap and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. The result is an insightful portrayal of the power television possesses to influence our culture.

Author Biography

Gary R. Edgerton, professor and chair of the Communication and Theatre Arts Department at Old Dominion University Peter C. Rollins, Regents Professor of English at Oklahoma State University

Table of Contents

Introduction: Television as Historian: A Different Kind of History Altogether	1	(19)
Gary R. Edgerton
Part I: Prime-Time Entertainment Programming as Historian
History TV and Popular Memory	19	(18)
Steve Anderson
Masculinity and Femininity in Television's Historical Fictions: Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman	37	(22)
Mimi White
Quantum Leap: The Postmodern Challenge of Television as History	59	(20)
Robert Hanke
Profiles in Courage: Televisual History on the New Frontier	79	(24)
Daniel Marcus
Part II: The Television Documentary as Historian
Victory at Sea: Cold War Epic	103	(20)
Peter C. Rollins
Breaking the Mirror: Dutch Television and the History of the Second World War	123	(20)
Chris Vos
Contested Public Memories: Hawaiian History as Hawaiian or American Experience	143	(26)
Carolyn Anderson
Mediating Thomas Jefferson: Ken Burns as Popular Historian	169	(24)
Gary R. Edgerton
Part III: TV News and Public Affairs Programming as Historian
Pixies: Homosexuality, Anti-Communism, and the Army-McCarthy Hearings	193	(14)
Thomas Doherty
Images of History in Israel Television News: The Territorial Dimension of Collective Memories, 1987--1990	207	(23)
Netta Ha-Ilan
Memories of 1945 and 1963: American Television Coverage of the End of the Berlin Wall, November 9, 1989	230	(14)
David Culbert
Television: The First Flawed Rough Drafts of History	244	(17)
Philip M. Taylor
Part IV: Television Production, Reception, and History
The History Channel and the Challenge of Historical Programming	261	(21)
Brian Taves
Rethinking Television History	282	(27)
Douglas Gomery
Nice Guys Last Fifteen Seasons: Jack Benny on Television, 1950--1965	309	(26)
James L. Baughman
Organizing Difference on Global TV: Television History and Cultural Geography	335	(22)
Michael Curtin
Selected Bibliography: Additional Sources for Researching Television as Historian	357	(9)
Kathryn Helgesen Fuller-Seeley
Contributors	366	(4)
Television and Film Index	370	(6)
General Index	376