Complex TV: ten years later

Ten years after the publication of his Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling , a fundamental text in seriality and television studies, Jason Mittell will deliver a doctoral lecture entitled Complex TV, Continued (with a Gap) on November 20 at 10:30 a.m. in Aula Seminari (IULM 1, VI floor).

In Complex TV, Mittell analyzed how the U.S. serial TV landscape has evolved since the early 2000s, highlighting how a series of transformations in technology, production and audience awareness have fostered the emergence of complex and articulated forms of serial storytelling that require, in order to be understood, a renewal of the tools of traditional narratology. Ten years later, in his lecture at our Athenaeum, Mittell will reflect on what in television storytelling has remained unchanged and what has changed, particularly since the rise of streaming platforms and the resulting transformations in the structure of television series.

The meeting is coordinated by IULM lecturers Daniela Cardini and Chiara Grizzaffi.

Jason Mittell is Professor of Film & Media Culture at Middlebury College. He is the author of such volumes as Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture, Television and American Culture, Complex Television: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (NYU Press, 2015), Narrative Theory and ADAPTATION. and The Chemistry of Character in Breaking Bad: A Videographic Book. Along with Christian Keathley and Catherine Grant, he is co-author of The Videographic Essay, and co-editor of How to Watch Television (NYU Press, 2013; second edition, 2020). He writes about television and videographic criticism in his blog Just TV.