MIT Class on American Soap Operas

Why didn't they have this when I was in college?

In the spring semester at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Sam Ford will be teaching a class on the American Soap Opera. The course is not just open to MIT undergraduate and graduate students but also students at Harvard University, Wellesley College, the Massachusetts College of Art, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Ford did his Master's thesis work on soaps and has a couple of book projects in motion currently on the current state of daytime serial dramas.

CMS 603/CMS 995: American Soap Operas
The television landscape has changed drastically in the past few years; nowhere is this more prevalent than in the American daytime serial drama, one of the oldest forms of television content. This class examines the history of these "soap operas" and their audiences by focusing on the production, consumption, and media texts of soaps. The class will include discussions of what makes soap operas a unique form, the history of the genre, current experimentation with transmedia storytelling, the online fan community, and comparisons between daytime dramas and primetime serials from "24" to "Friday Night Lights," through a study of Procter & Gamble's "As the World Turns."