Free Public Lecture: Tv Snapshots: An Archive of Everyday Life

Monday, February 2, 2015 2:30 pm Reception
3:00 pm Lecture Gerlinger Lounge — FREE

A public lecture by Lynn Spigel, Francis E. Willard Professor of Screen Cultures, Northwestern University will be held at the Gerlinger Lounge on February 2. In her lecture, Spigel will be exploring a collection of family snapshots depicting people posing in front of their TV sets in the 1950s and 1960s and how they used TV as a backdrop for social performances of family life and social identities of gender, class, and race:

“This talk explores my new collection of over 5000 family snapshots depicting people posing in front of their TV sets in the 1950s and 1960s. I consider how snapshot cameras functioned as an appendage  technology for television at the time when TV first came into US  homes. Snapshots were a “thing to do” with TV beyond TV’s more  obvious function as a spectator medium.

These snapshots provide visual  evidence of the social life into which TV inserted itself. They show  us how people arranged their rooms for television and how they used it  as an object of display. But, most importantly, they show us how  people used TV as a backdrop for social performances of family life  and social identifies of gender, class, and race.

In addition to  considering these photos as a new form of visual evidence for the  social practices surrounding TV’s innovation, I also explore their  status as forms of “analog nostalgia” by considering why they have  reappeared as valuable collectibles on the vintage market and online  websites today.” -Lynn Spigel

Spigel, the Francis E. Willard Professor of Screen Cultures at Northwestern University, is the author of TV By Design: Modern Art and the Rise of Network Television; Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs; and Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America. She has co-edited volumes including The Revolution Wasn’t Televised: Sixties Television and Social Conflict; Feminist Television Criticism: A Reader; and Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition.

There will be a reception with Lynn Spigel at 2:30 pm, followed by the lecture at 3 pm. Coffee and desserts will be served before and after the event.

This event is co-sponsored by the School of Journalism & Communication/Media Studies Program.