A teenage girl kissing a teenage boy on the cheek

Media Representation and Interracial Couples

Recent years have seen increases in both interracial adolescent romances and portrayals of young interracial relationships. What's the connection?
Robert Reed who played Mike Brady on the Brady Bunch

The “Queer Innocence” of the Brady Bunch

The squeaky-clean Brady Bunch family symbolized the avoidance of the sexual revolution, feminism, and other social forces that were coming to the fore.
Vietnam War television

How TV Transformed the News in 1968

In 1968 violent events at home and aboard were broadcast in color on the television news, creating impacts that may have swayed the presidential election.
Antiques Roadshow

The Religious Experience of Antiques Roadshow

What has made this slow, quiet television show about antiques the sleeper hit of PBS? One scholar describes the show as enacting near-religious rituals.
Cynthia Nixon

Why Sex and The City is Still in Style

Sex and the City was on television from 1998-2004, and still holds cultural cachet today. But does the actual programming still hold up?
Ellen DeGeneres

How Ellen DeGeneres Changed TV

In 1997, Ellen DeGeneres publicly came out on her show, Ellen. It was a cultural turning point for many.
Twilight Zone spiral

Why We Still Love The Twilight Zone

Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone stood out in the "vast wasteland" of television in the early 1960s and still resonates today.
Queer Eye cast

Why Queer Eye Still Matters

Underneath the home and personal makeovers, is "Queer Eye" political?
Photgraph: Fred Rogers lacing up his iconic sneakers

Source: Grand Communications/The Fred Rogers Company

Long Live Mister Rogers’ Quiet Revolution

Fred Rogers argued by example and in his quiet, firm way that television’s power could be harnessed to shape future generations for good.
Candice Bergen Murphy Brown

Murphy Brown, Motherhood, and “Family Values”

Murphy Brown represented a threat to “family values”—a position that inherently placed her on the side of the families of color whose single family structures supposedly threatened the white, middle-class status quo of the 1990s.