Wayne State University Press books on hit TV shows are scholarly but never stuffy
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
When “Will & Grace” arrived on NBC in 1998, the early publicity maneuvered carefully around the trailblazing fact that it had a gay male lead character. As Eric McCormack, who played Will, said early on: “I would love to get to the point where grandmothers in Kansas are saying, ‘I just hope that Will finds a nice man.’ We’re not a political show, but that would be a real coup.”
Well, McCormack certainly downplayed its potential. In 2012, then-Vice President Joe Biden praised "Will & Grace" for doing more to educate Americans about gay rights "than almost anything anybody's ever done so far."
This June, the Tribeca Film Festival celebrated the show's 25th anniversary with a star-studded event that included a live recording of “Just Jack & Will,” the new podcast with McCormack and Sean Hayes (who played Will’s gay friend Jack) that revisits a different episode each week.
Starting Tuesday, fans can delve deeper into the history and meaning of the sitcom with “Will & Grace,” a Wayne State University Press book about the TV comedy that author Tison Pugh describes as“ a big step forward for queer representation on television and mainstream media and popular culture” (and who cites the "grandmothers in Kansas" quote in his first chapter).
Pugh, an English professor at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, says one of the enduring parts of the "Will & Grace" legacy is how well it worked on two levels. "It managed to be both hilariously entertaining and impart a very important social message,” he says.
Having one book about a television hit is enough to give a university press a certain cool factor. Spending 20 years producing almost 50 books about an eclectic bunch of TV shows, however, makes Wayne State University Press stand out from the academic crowd.
"Will & Grace" is part of a series called TV Milestones that covers nearly as much rewatchable content as Paramount Plus or Peacock. Since 2004, it has published monographs on 1950s and 1960s hits like “Perry Mason,” “Bewitched,” "Have Gun, Will Travel," “Father Knows Best” and “Maverick,” while also delving into more recent game changers from the 1970s through the 1990s, including "The Flip Wilson Show," “M*A*S*H,” “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” “Miami Vice” and “Homicide: Life on the Street.”
Some of the most intriguing books from the Detroit-based press are about shows from 2000 to now that define Peak TV, the phenomenon fueled by HBO and other networks that gambled on quality: “The Sopranos,” “Breaking Bad,” “Mad Men,” “The Wire,” “The Americans,” "The Good Place" and so on.
TV Milestones hasn't featured a show that originated on a streaming site yet, but stay tuned. There is bound to be one coming soon.
If you don’t recall your college reading assignments as being quick and easy, you're not alone. The writing that comes from academic publishing houses is serious, scholarly research. Yet TV Milestones aims to be more approachable than a typical textbook, according to Marie Sweetman, Wayne State University Press senior acquisitions editor.
“What kind of book could really appeal to an undergraduate-level student who is getting started in this field of study?” says Sweetman of the style of the Milestones books, which are edited by series editor Barry Keith David of Brock University in St. Catharine's, Ontario, Canada. “The goal is always affordable, accessible, injecting a little fun into what is often considered a very dry, scholarly space.”
Priced at $19.99 for print or digital editions, the books take an original approach not just in content but also in their compact size. At about 130 to 140 pages, they are shorter than the average academic book, which can be twice or three times as long. Measuring abut 5-by-7 inches, the print versions could fit in an oversized pocket.
Like TV itself, the books explore everything from highbrow fare to the cult hit “Kolchak: The Night Stalker,” the supernatural-themed 1974-75 drama that is considered a precursor to later standouts like “The X-Files.” The “Kolchak” volume, which came out in August 2022, has been an attention-getter, says Sweetman, who wasn't familiar with the short-lived show before acquiring the book.
Milestones books are rigorous yet readable
Unlike mass publishers that can measure performance through bestseller lists, university press books look to things like positive reviews and the number of scholars that use them. Jay P. Telotte, a two-time author for TV Milestones (as J. P. Telotte), says the longevity of the series speaks to its success, but so does its innovative approach.
“While academically rigorous — these volumes, after all, go through the usual expert reviewer process of major university presses — the TV Milestones books are also highly readable, and that combination of rigor and readability is a difficult one to achieve,” says Telotte, a professor in the School of Literature, Media and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology,
Telotte was the author of the first TV Milestones book, which was published in March 2004. It was “Disney TV,” an overview of the Disney expansion from movies to television that began in 1954 and resulted in pop-culture landmarks like “The Mickey Mouse Club” and five “Davy Crockett” shows, among others.
His next book for the series, “Science Fiction Theatre,” is set to arrive in January, It's about the underrated anthology series of the same name that ran from 1955 to 1957 and was shown in reruns well into the 1960s. Although “The Twilight Zone” is seen as the first sci-fi TV show for adults, Tolette’s book challenges this view.
“Science Fiction Theatre,” according to Tolette, was a pioneer that "addressed such subjects as food shortages, overpopulation, energy production and disease treatments, while stressing the laboratory work of real science and offering depictions of women as science professionals and researchers.”
Although TV studies used to suffer from being what Sweetman terms a “younger sibling syndrome to film studies,” it is no longer the new kid on the block.
“Television studies is now established, and it's videogame studies that is being established,” says Pugh. “With every field, there’s always a little lag. When film studies really started in the ‘50s and ‘60s, there was shock and horror. 'How can we be studying film at universities?' The answer was, 'How can we not?' ... Of course, television is incredibly important."
Sometimes, a specific TV show can speak to a moment in time with broad social meaning. Holly W. Holladay, author of the “Parks and Recreation” volume for TV Milestones, says it is no coincidence that the NBC sitcom about small-town government in Pawnee, Indiana, which ran from 2009 to 2015, began after President Barack Obama was elected and ended before he left office.
“Both in terms of politics and a lot of other things happening in culture, there is no better time capsule of the Obama era specifically,” says Holladay. She argues that lead character Leslie Knope (played by Amy Poehler) is “very clearly a proxy for that Obama era optimism that was happening in ’08, ’09” and beyond.
Holladay's book also addresses the online impact of “Parks and Rec,” which aired as social media was exploding in popularity. During its run, millions of posts, tweets, gifs and memes referenced “Parks and Rec” themes like Galentine’s Day, the day-before-Valentine’s-Day celebration of women’s friendship, and Treat Yo Self, a day designated by Donna (Retta) and Tom (Aziz Ansari) for self-indulgence such as purchasing expensive items.
Even Li'l Sebastian, the miniature horse character beloved by "Parks and Recs" viewers, was so meme-worthy Holladay's book has him on the cover.
Although "Parks and Rec" ended its run eight years ago, Galentine’s Day continues to grow and has become widely recognized as an informal holiday, as evidenced by the June Vanity Fair profile of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer that mentioned she was hosting a Galentine’s Day reception.
“You are building a tradition that is going to last. …”It’s like a snowball, right? More people are participating every year,” says Holladay.
Other scholarly presses are following the lead of Wayne State University Press lead with smaller, succinct book series. Rutgers University Press offers overviews on movies and popular culture with its Quick Takes books. Bloomsbury Publishing's British Film Institute imprint deep-dives into cinema must-sees like "The Deer Hunter" and "Rushmore" with its BFI Film Classics.
TV’s influence on our daily lives as a storyteller is “a hill to die on” for screen scholars like Holladay. “The importance of television is in its accessibility, in its ability to tell complicated, complex human stories in a way that is so relatable and that helps us make sense of and figure out who we are, what we want, what we can be. ... It is the coolest thing to study,” she says.
If only they gave college credit for streaming binges.
Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Wayne State's publishing house finds deeper meaning behind TV shows
