The Golden Age of Television Fiction: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Television Series

In 1996 Robert J. Thompson wrote the vastly influential Television’s Second Golden Age: From Hill Street Blues to ER defining the controversial term ‘quality television’. As Thompson himself has stated, a decade after this publication, what was t...

In 1996 Robert J. Thompson wrote the vastly influential Television’s Second Golden Age: From Hill Street Blues to ER defining the controversial term ‘quality television’. As Thompson himself has stated, a decade after this publication, what was then exceptional and innovative has now become the norm, which suggest we might have entered yet another golden age. However instead of trying to demarcate each and every new wave of golden age, it might be best to claim, like the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica, that ‘it has happened before and it will happen again’.

Despite the spreading of ‘quality’ across the board, however, textual analysis in television studies is still in its infancy. This conference aims to contribute to the growing field of the textual analysis of television series and solicits papers that analyse any aspect of the texts of such shows as Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Heroes, Desperate Housewives, Nip/Tuck, The L Word, Veronica Mars, Dexter, Torchwood, etc. This list of shows is meant to be inspirational rather than conclusive and papers on television series not listed above will also be welcome.

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