Shawn Shimpach
My research interests include the cultural history of film, television, and media; the social and institutional constructions of the media audience; genre theory and screen genres; and screen industries. My work focuses on the value and meanings created at the conjuncture of cultural, institutional, and textual practice. I am the editor of The Routledge Companion to Global Television featuring contributors from six continents on questions of technological change and global difference in the world of contemporary television. My book Television in Transition: The Life and Afterlife of the Narrative Action Hero (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) combines and connects analysis of the contemporary television industry with close readings of four individual programs to explain how innovation takes place and meaning is produced amidst changing institutional configurations. My work has also appeared in Cultural Studies, Social Semiotics, American Quarterly, Feminist Media Histories, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Television & New Media, and such collections as Media and Public Spheres (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), the Handbook of Media Audiences (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), and the Routledge Companion to Global Popular Culture (Routledge, 2015) and ReFocus: The Films of Paul Leni (Edinburgh UP, 2021).
As a faculty member, I am also affiliated with the Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies; the Five College Film Council; and the American Studies Program.
PhD, Cinema Studies, New York University
Undergraduate: Film Styles & Genres; Introduction to Film Studies; History of Film; Television in Transition.
Graduate: Media Historiography; Hollywood Industry & Style; Television Studies: Text, Culture, Industry; Speculative Media Studies; Textual Analysis
The Routledge Companion to Global Television, ed., Routledge, 2020.
Television in Transition: The Life and Afterlife of the Narrative Action Hero, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
“The Last Warning: Uncertainty, Exploitation, and Horror.” In ReFocus: The Films of Paul Leni, Erica Tortolani and Martin F. Norden, eds. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021, 219-238.
“What’s New.” Television & New Media 21:6 (July, 2020): 664-670.
"'Only in This Way is Social Progress Possible': Early Cinema, Gender, and the Social Survey Movement." Feminist Media Histories 3:3 (July 2017): 82-106.
"Mad Men is History." Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 37:4 (Fall 2017): 722-744.
"The Metrics, reloaded," in Toby Miller (ed.), Routledge Companion to Global Popular Culture, Routledge, 2015.
"'This is What I Need, This is What Will Travel': Television Programs in the Era of Transition." In Vicki Mayer (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies: Media Production (Volume II), Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, 192-214.
"Realty Reality: HGTV and the Subprime Crisis." American Quarterly 63:3, September 2012, 515-542.
"Viewing," in Virginia Nightingale (ed.), Handbook of Media Audiences, Wiley-Blackwell (part of the Handbooks in Global Media and Communication Series), 2011, 62-85.
"Representing the Pubilc of the Cinema's Public Sphere," in Richard Butsch (ed.), Media and Public Spheres, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, 136-148.
"Working Watching: The Creative and Cultural Labor of the Media Audience," Social Semiotics 15:3, December 2005, 343-360.
"The Immortal Cosmopolitan: The International Co-production and Global Circulation of Highlander: The Series," Cultural Studies 19:3, May 2005, 338-371.
ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES:
"Media Representation" with Søren Hough in The American Middle Class: An Economic Encyclopedia of Progress and Poverty, Robert Rycroft, ed., Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2017: 956-960.
"Hollywood" in America in the World, 1776 to the Present: A Supplement to the Dictionary of American History, Edward J. Blum, ed., 2 vols. Farmington Hills, MI: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2016: 457-460.
"Disney" in America in the World, 1776 to the Present: A Supplement to the Dictionary of American History, Edward J. Blum, ed., 2 vols. Farmington Hills, MI: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2016: 289-292.
"Entertainment Tonight" in Encyclopedia of Television, Second Edition. Horace Newcomb, ed. New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2004: 811-813.
Currently writing Data-Driven TV, under contract with Routledge for 2024 publication.