Focusing on different television markets, the panelists’ presentations highlight the role of television in the United States, Mexico, and Brazil. Looking at the History of Television in the United States, Kate L. Flach explores how Americans envisioned television as a site for civic engagement and liberal politics in the 1960s-1970s. Meanwhile, Kylie Walters discusses how corporations like Mobil Oil intervened in debates about regulation and advertising in the U.S. during the 1970s and 80s through the strategic sponsorship of public television programs on PBS and print media campaigns against network television. Melissa Phruksachart examines Cold War U.S. television as an archive for Asian American history, noting how Asian and Asian American televisual figures and plotlines articulated the co-incidence of geopolitical issues of the Cold War, national affairs like civil rights, and Los Angeles-area municipal concerns around Asian immigration and the building of suburbia. Turning to Mexico, Melixa Abad-Izquierdo researches television in 1950s Mexico City using a transmedial approach due to the lack of television footage from the period, as such she draws on advertising agency archives, newspapers, TV critics’ papers and memoirs from performers. Meanwhile, Thamyris Almeida explores the rise of television during Brazil’s transition from democracy to dictatorship (1964-1985), foregrounding the inter-American Cold War as a central framework for understanding the growth and expansion of television in Brazil.

This roundtable is a chance to reflect on the relative absence of television studies within the discipline. Given the ongoing conversations surrounding media literacy, particularly as it pertains to a thriving democracy, we question the relative erasure of television as a valid category for historical inquiry.