In Focus: The Place of Television Studies

Abstract

This In Focus, on the current state of television and new media studies, was inspired by two recent landmarks in the history of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS). The first was the second anniversary of the decision by the membership to change the organization's name to affirm its support for scholarship in radio, television, and digital media. The change marked the culmination of a long campaign among television scholars and others within SCMS to recognize its members' expanded intellectual terrain. Despite the name change, however, the organization's official publication, Cinema Journal, still receives relatively few manuscript submissions devoted to nonfilm topics. While there are probably many reasons for the low proportion of television-and new media-related submissions (some beyond the journal's control), the editors hoped that devoting an In Focus to television and new media would underscore the journal's commitment to providing a venue for the best emerging scholarship in the field. The second occasion for this In Focus section was the success of the 2005 SCMS conference, held at the University of London's Institute of Education. In addition to being the first SCMS conference convened outside North America, a record number of panels and papers addressed nonfilm topics. Furthermore, the London venue, which helped attract an unprecedented number of European scholars to the conference, also reinforced the international nature of television studies, old and new. As television studies emerged out of the 1980s cross-Atlantic confluence of film studies, political economy, feminism, and cultural studies, among the important venues for new scholarship were the four international television studies conferences organized between 1984 and 1991 by the British Film Institute and the University of London's Institute of Education. As Lynn Spigel notes in her essay here, that those conferences and the 2005 SCMS conference were held at the same venue prompted reflection on the past two decades of television studies and on the future of the field.