This post originally appeared on the Critical Studies in Television blog. Despite the confidence of its title, History’s recent miniseries The Food That Built America (2019) seems to invite questions about its own premise. What, we might ask, does it mean to say that a particular food has built America? Do we mean “built” economically? Culturally? Politically? All of the above? […]

This post originally appeared on the Critical Studies in Television blog. Incongruity, Immanuel Kant once observed, is an essential element of humor. “In everything that is to excite a lively convulsive laugh there must be something absurd (in which the understanding, therefore, can find no satisfaction). Laughter is an affectation arising from the sudden transformation of […]

This post originally appeared on the blog of the International Association for Media and History (IAMHIST) When it premiered on the ABC (U.S.) network in the spring of 1949, Crusade in Europe, the 26-part adaptation of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s best-selling war memoir was hailed as long-awaited confirmation of TV’s capacity for cultural enlightenment – proof positive […]