Canadian Review of American Studies (Winter 2021): Special Issue on New Perspectives on New Television

“Over the last few decades, television (or at least some modalities of it) has evolved into one of the most sophisticated and nuanced narrative art forms known to humanity. And yet, as Martin Shuster has observed, critical optics that have emerged out of lit- erary studies, cinema studies, media studies, and philosophy have only recently been turned toward the groundswell of contemporary televisual offerings. What Shuster refers to as “new television” is a simple intervention predicated on the awareness that series such as The Wire, Breaking Bad, and The Sopranos articulate the coordinates of a world in which long-standing American institutions have been liquidated of their authority and “end of history” narratives about the benevolent potentials of technocapitalism ring hollow. As such, series operating in the new-televisual mode mark a rupture from those that preceded them, and insightful new critical approaches are required to appreciate their shared and divergent contours. This far-reaching Canadian Review of American Studies special issue draws inspiration from Shuster’s gesture insofar as each article employs the concept of new television as a leaping-off point for pushing television criticism in exciting new directions.”