OSU Arts and Humanities Lecture to Focus on Heartland TV

Monday, April 5, 2010

By Joseph Dunn

(April 5, 2010, STILLWATER, Okla.) – Television and cultural studies scholar Victoria Johnson will explore national values, regional identities and their roles in television on April 9 at Oklahoma State University.

The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is titled “The Red State/Blue State Myth and Popular Television: Friday Night Lights’ Challenge to the Logics of Quality TV.” The talk starts at 4:30 p.m. in Room 313 of the Classroom Building.

Friday Night Lights, an American TV series, is broadcast by NBC and uses small-town America as its backdrop to address issues facing contemporary Middle America.

Johnson wrote Heartland TV: Prime Time Television and the Struggle for U.S. Identity, which examines the American Midwest in critical moments in U.S. history.

Johnson is an associate professor of film and media studies at University of California, Irvine, and serves on the editorial board of The Journal of Film and Video. She won the 2009 Katherine Singer Kovacs Book Award for Heartland TV.

The lecture is hosted by the OSU Department of English, which is one of 24 departments in the College of Arts & Sciences, and is funded by the college’s Arts and Humanities Lecture Series. To learn more, phone (405) 744-6261 or e-mail meghan.sutherland@okstate.edu.