Genre and the American Culture Industries
Alexander Starre
Kommentar
In the sprawling media ecology of our digital present, genre categories help viewers and readers sort through content and curate custom watchlists and to-read shelves. Genre dynamics often work in two opposing directions: on the one hand, narrative genres like the detective story, the western, or the romance provide creators and audiences with a set of shared rules and structures, thus reinforcing boundary lines between generic conventions and traditions. On the other hand, cultural artifacts often derive unique forms by freely mixing and adapting multiple genres (as seen in recent hybrids such as “docudrama,” “romantasy,” or “eco-dystopia”).
This course seeks to provide three perspectives on genre in American cultural studies: 1) We will study a select number of key texts in genre theory, a broad field of conceptual thinking with important impulses for critical analyses. 2) We will revisit the classic “culture industry” thesis by Adorno and Horkheimer and pair it with more recent media historical and infrastructural insights concerning the evolution of the culture industries in North America in the twenty-first century, with a distinct focus on film and television production as well as literature and the publishing industry. 3) We will cover a (very limited) number of case studies, fusing the analysis of a single work with the cultural, commercial, and social workings of its genre(s). Reading and viewing selections include: the publishing satire/ thriller Yellowface (2023) by R.F. Kuang; the romance novel Seven Days in June by Tia Williams (2021); the horror movie Get Out (2016; written and directed by Jordan Peele); the dystopian office dramedy Severance (2022 - ).
In the final part of the course, student groups will work on individual projects that further explore the key themes of the course in genre texts of their own choosing.
Schließen16 Termine
Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung