October 26, 2009 | 12:30-2:00 PM | Free & Open to the Public
Communications Building, Room 150, UC Santa Cruz
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Television has taken part in articulation of cultural and national identity all over the globe. How is a sense of “the local” changing as media grows increasingly mobile and new global television forms dominate world-wide programming?
In Israel, a debate about television’s birth escalated to a national argument over occupation of Palestinian territories, relations with Arab neighbors, and it’s internal, conflicting visions of shared culture and identity. This talk explores how historical imaginings and political clashes over television persist in haunting Israel through its most popular format program The Apprentice. In revealing how the format’s global conventions were translated into a politically explosive experiment in international political relations, the Israeli case illustrates why television, and its particular national history, still matters in our global media environment.
Tasha Oren is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, where she directs the Graduate Studies program in the Department of English. She is the author of Demon in the Box: Jews, Arabs, Politics and Culture (Rutgers University Press) and co-editor of East Main Street: Asian American Popular Culture (NYU Press), Global Currents: Media and Technology Now (Rutgers University Press), and Global Television Formats (Routledge Press, forthcoming).
For more information about the colloquium or accessibility, call (831) 459-3204, send email to film@ucsc.edu or visit film.ucsc.edu.
Sponsored by the Film & Digital Media Department with support from the Arts Research Institute.