This course discusses topics in the research of television in its cultural, historical, and social contexts. It focuses on the American context, starting in the 1950s, when TV becomes the dominant medium and discourse in American socio-cultural life, proceeds to the radical decade of the 1960s, to examine how social processes are articulated in TV’s production and consumption, examines 1980s American television in the reactionary Reagan era, and studies current American television in its global and domestic contexts. Television is studied in its historic contexts in relation to other motion fiction arts such as film. By studying television in its historical and socio-cultural settings, and employing a cultural studies approach to television as a social critique, we aim at establishing a sound theoretical base and relevant methodologies for the study of Israeli television genres, aesthetics and ideological discourses, with a comparative reference to American TV in its cultural, social and historical contexts. Hence, the course sheds light on the workings of television as a cultural forum and a central site for the negotiation of cultural agenda and changing ideologies, television as public service versus commercial television, global formats and local formations.   The course focuses on case studies and the practice of television production, reception and textual interpretations, as illustrations for theoretical discussions and the reading of bibliography.