Television Histories: Shaping Collective Memory in the Media Age

From Ken Burns's documentaries to historical dramas such as Roots, from A&E's Biography series to CNN's coverage of such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, television has become the primary source for historical information for tens of millions of Americans today. Why has television become such a respected authority? What falsehoods enter our collective memory as truths? How is one to know what is real and what is imagined - or ignored - by producers, directors, or writers? Gary Edgerton and Peter Rollins have collected a group of essays that answer these and many other questions. The contributors examine the full spectrum of historical genres, as well as institutions such as the History Channel and production histories of such series as The Jack Benny Show, which ran for fifteen years. The authors explore the tensions between popular history and professional history and the tendency of some academics to declare the past "off limits" to nonscholars. Several of them point to the tendency for television histories to embed current concerns and priorities within the past, as in such popular shows as Quantum Leap and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. The result is an insightful portrayal of the power television possesses to influence our culture.

Contents
Television Histories: Shaping Collective Memory in the Media Age
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Table of Contents
Introduction: Television as Historian: A Different Kind of History Altogether
Part I: Prime-Time Entertainment Programming as Historian
1. History TV and Popular Memory 19
2. Masculinity and Femininity in Television’s Historical Fictions 37
3. Quantum Leap: The Postmodern Challenge of Television as History 59
4. Profiles in Courage: Televisual History on the New Frontier 79
Part II: The Television Documentary as Historian
5. Victory at Sea: Cold War Epic 103
6. Breaking the Mirror: Dutch Television and the History of the Second World War 123
7. Contested Public Memories: Hawaiian History as Hawaiian or American Experience 143
8. Mediating Thomas Jefferson: Ken Burns as Popular Historian 169
Part III: TV News and Public Affairs Programming as Historian
9. Pixies: Homosexuality, Anti-Communism, and the Army–McCarthy Hearings 193
10. Images of History in Israel Television News: The Territorial Dimension of Collective Memories, 1987–1990 207
11. Memories of 1945 and 1963: American Television Coverage of the End of the Berlin Wall, November 9, 1989 230
12. Television: The First Flawed Rough Drafts of History 244
Part IV: Television Production, Reception, and History
13. The History Channel and the Challenge of Historical Programming 261
14 Rethinking Television History 282
15. Nice Guys Last Fifteen Seasons: Jack Benny on Television,1950–1965 309
16. Organizing Difference on Global TV: Television History and Cultural Geography 335
Selected Bibliography
Contributors
Television and Film Index
General Index