TV at Pollock: Gender, Work and the Sitcom Family

As a living-room fixture in homes across the world, television has reinforced and challenged our changing cultural values and shared beliefs. This event will embrace television’s role as a cultural forum and mass entertainment medium, examining the themes of gender, work, and family in the situation comedy over the past six decades. Drawing from three iconic series that raise compelling questions about the roles of women and men, this event will feature screenings of the following sitcoms: Father Knows Best season 2, episode 30 “Betty, Girl Engineer”; The Mary Tyler Moore Show season 1, episode 1 “Love is All Around”; and Modern Family season 5, episode 2 “First Days.”

Elana Levine (English, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) will join moderator Aleah Kiley (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion of the evolution of gender and work in the family sitcom.