News, drama, comedy, game shows, talk shows, soap operas, sports, video clips, and more recently reality TV—these concepts are extremely familiar to the average television viewer, even if the theoretical notion uniting them all—the “genre”—which will be the focus of this seminar —might be less well known. The course will not introduce new genres (albeit we will consider recent developments in familiar genres) and will not address marginal genres (albeit we will watch several episodes from shows that were not at the top of the ratings). The course will introduce several aspects of genre studies including textual, social, and ideological approaches. In addition, we will look at several central television genres, studying not only each genre’s characteristics but also inquiring about the culture that gave rise to it and its audiences