Professor Hargraves’s research and teaching traverses the intersections of affect, performance, and representation within television and digital pop cultural studies. He has published in journals such as Camera Obscura, the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Television & New Media, and Communication, Culture and Critique, and in anthologies such as How to Watch Television (2^nd edition). He has also published shorter articles on pedagogy in Teaching Media and co-organized the “Talking Television in a time of Crisis” podcast during the pandemic (both sponsored by the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies). His first book, Uncomfortable Television, which explores the turn to discomfort in early-21^st Century American television, will be published in February 2023 by Duke University Press.

 

Dr. Hargraves received his Ph.D in Modern Culture and Media from Brown University and has been at CSUF since 2015. He regularly teaches television studies courses in the department such as CTVA 302 (Critical Studies: Television), CTVA 305 (Diversity in Television), CTVA 363 (American Television: 1980-Present), and CTVA 366T (Reality TV). He also teaches CTVA 382 (Queer Film and Television) and serves as affiliated faculty for the Queer Studies Minor.

 

Selected Publications:

• Uncomfortable Television, Duke University Press (2023).
• “Spectral Remainders and Sacred Spaces: Spirituality and the Antiracist Classroom,” JCMS Teaching Dossier (2022).
• Talking Television… podcast series (co-organizer, 2020-2021).
• “Looking: Smartphone Aesthetics,” in How to Watch Television (2^nd Edition, 2020).
• “Tiger King, Stranger-Than-Fiction, and the Insistence of Reality Television,” Communication Culture & Critique (2020).
• • “‘For the First Time in __________ History…’: Microcelebrity and/as Historicity in Reality TV Competitions,” Celebrity Studies ( 2018 ).

 

Professor Hargraves teaches contemporary American television studies in the Department of Cinema and Television Arts, including courses such as 302 (Critical Studies: Television), 305 (Diversity in Television), 363 (American Television, 1980-Present), and 366T (TV Genres); he is also an affiliated faculty member in the Queer Studies Minor. His research interests include television history and theory, smartphone culture, affect studies, and popular cultural studies engaging with questions of race, gender, and sexuality. He has published in journals such as    Camera Obscura, Television & New Media,     and in the anthology     A Companion to Reality Television   . He is currently finishing a manuscript entitled  Viscerally Uncomfortable Television   , which asks why spectators of contemporary American television derive pleasure from stories that are designed to provoke feelings of discomfort and disgust. He received his PhD from Brown University’s Department of Modern Culture and Media in 2015.