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Northwestern School of Communication

Mimi White

Professor
I am working on a book about Hallmark television, reassessing the habitual ways of dealing with formulaic media, and working with the unexpected affect that Hallmark media routinely provoke. I am interested in the pleasure the movies offer in the context of women's experiences, even those that sometimes seem banal or normative at first glance.

Department

Radio/Television/Film

Area(s) of Expertise

Cinema-Film, Feminist theory, Media analysis, Television
Mimi White

Mimi White studies and teaches film, television, and media culture with emphases on critical-cultural theory, gender, and history. She is the author of Tele-Advising: Therapeutic Discourse in American Television (1992), co-author of Media Knowledge: Popular Culture, Pedagogy, and Critical Citizenship (1992), and co-editor of Questions of Method in Cultural Studies (2006). She has published on such topics as historical narrative in film and television, American film in 1970, 1980s woman’s films, television flow, liveness, feminist video art, and serial melodrama; she has written about a wide range of television programs including Cheaters, Barry Chappell’s Fine Art Showcase, House Hunters, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, I’ll Fly Away, Frank’s Place, and Mad Men. This work has appeared in edited book collections and in such journals as European Journal of Cultural Studies, Television and New Media, The Communication Review, Film and History, Cinema Journal, Screen, and Camera Obscura. She is currently working on a book, Hallmark and the Extra-Ordinary Appeal of Formulaic TV.

White has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Pembroke Center, Brown University; a Fulbright Fellow in the Department of Communications, Helsinki University; a visiting professor at Jyväskylä University; and held the Bicentennial Fulbright Chair in North American Studies at Helsinki University.


Education

  • PhD Communication Studies, University of Iowa
  • MA Communication Studies, University of Iowa
  • BA History, Brown University

Recent Publications

  • “Animating Entertainment, or Very Special Media Reflexivity,” in Very Special Episodes: Televising Industrial and Social Change. Eds. Jonathan Cohn and Jennifer Porst. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2021, 159-173.
  • “Scientific Affiliation in Reality-Based Media: Affect, Intimacy, Spectacle,” Screen 62:2, summer 2021, 214-216; (Introduction to a dossier I edited, co-authored with Misha Kavka).
  • “Genetic Affect, As Seen on TV,” Screen 62:2, summer 2021, 245-253.
  • “A House Divided,” European Journal of Cultural Studies.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 20: 5 (October 2017), pp. 575-591. DOI:10.1177/1367549417701756
  • "Mad Women."; In Mad Men: Dream Come True TV. Ed. Gary R. Edgerton. London: I.B. Taurus, 2011, 147-158.
  • "1970: Movies and the Movement."; In American Cinema in the 1970s: Themes and Variations. Ed. Lester Friedman. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007.
  • Questions of Method in Cultural Studies. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006. Co-edited with James Schwoch.
  • "Investigating Cheaters."; The Communication Review, 9: 3 (2006), pp. 221-240.
  • "The Attractions of Television: Reconsidering Liveness."; In Mediaspace: Place, Scale, and Culture in a Media Age. Eds. Nick Couldry and Anna McCarthy. London: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 75-91. 2004.

Courses

  • Romantic Comedy
  • Analyzing Television
  • Nostalgia and its Discontent
  • Film, Media, and Gender
  • Reality Television
  • Film History
  • Television Theory
  • Textual Analysis
  • Feminist Theory and Popular Culture
  • Nostalgia and Popular Culture
  • Historical Narrative in Film and Television