In this dissertation, I assert that a contradictory aesthetic has remained and been reborn in the U.S. daytime soap opera through time and technology; I call this the “everyday implausible.” Using textual analysis and archival research, I follow this genre from its beginnings on radio, through its move to television...
This project centers set design as the primary aesthetic, economic, and sociopolitical driver of the sitcom genre’s emergence and development during the first half of the twentieth century. My work treats sitcom set design as a category of historical architecture that can be (and has been) mapped, toured, built, and...