Professor
Div. Head of Producing
Director of Internship Program

Producing
Graduate Studies in Media Arts

BA, Indiana University; MA & PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Mary Beth Haralovich is a film and television historian. Her research specialty is social history of US film and television--the study of how film and television participate in our national cultural life.

Her current research project, on “fireworks in film and television”, looks into how the meanings and pleasures of fireworks are incorporated across genres in film and television.

In television, Dr. Haralovich has studied programs about suburban family living, private eyes, international spies, and Survivor. "Sitcoms and Suburbs: Positioning the 1950s Homemaker" examines how television programs such as "Father Knows Best" and "Leave It to Beaver" presented suburban living: the suburban home was an ideal place for raising the family, but neighborhoods were segregated by race and class, women took care of the home and men worked. This essay has been reprinted several times.

"'Champagne Taste on a Beer Budget': Series Design and Popular Appeal in Magnum, p.i." looks at how this program presented post-vietnam and post-feminist American ordinary guys. "I Spy's 'Living Postcards': The Geo-Politics of Civil Rights" studies how this 1960s program presented the value of civil rights for U.S. foreign policy. The partnership of the integrated lead characters and their spy adventures make the point that progress in civil rights at home will benefit the U.S. position in the Cold War.

"'Expect the Unexpected': Narrative Pleasure and Unscripted Chance in Survivor" (co-authored with statistician Michael Trosset) looks at the hybrid genre of the popular television show and the essential role of unscripted chance.

In film history, Haralovich’s studies include 1930s and 1940s film advertising; color in 1950s Sirk melodrama; the Sherlock Holmes film series of the 1940s; U.S. films of 1950; the adaptation of the family-drama novel "Mildred Pierce" into a murder mystery film; and the studio production of ‘proletarian’ woman’s films in 1930s Hollywood. Her most recent publications, on 1930s films of Marlene Dietrich and Norma Shearer, are derived from her book-in-progress, "Marked Women: Local Promotion of ‘Scandalous Female’ Films of the 1930s," a study of how films are promoted differently in US cities as diverse as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Des Moines and Cedar Rapids (Iowa).

Haralovich is a Founder of "International Conference on Television, Video, New Media and Feminism: Console-ing Passions" and long-time member of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

In Media Arts, she is the Director of the Internship Program wherein students obtain learning in the field that complements their learning in the classroom.

e-mail: mbharalo@email.arizona.edu
office: 520.621.7800

Marshall Bldg, Room 241

http://idg.communication.utexas.edu/flow/