Arras authors book on cultural impact of Seinfeld sitcom
Paul Arras ’04 BA
(Hist)/’11 MA (Hist)/’16 PhD (Hist) has written Seinfeld: A Cultural History. The book was recently published by
Rowman & Littlefield, as part of its Cultural History of Television series.
Arras’s book explores
the history of the still-popular late-1990s sitcom Seinfeld — how the show’s ideas are woven into popular thought and
behavior, and how it challenged previous conventions of television comedy. The
book studies Seinfeld’s creators, its
supporters (and skeptics) at NBC, and its cast; and it pays close attention to
the writing of the show, offering a fresh look at the show’s episodes and broader
cultural impact. Arras explains what the show reveals about the decade in which
it was made, and its legacy for present-day viewers.
Arras teaches
communication studies at SUNY Cortland. His first book – growing from his
graduate studies at Maxwell – was The
Lonely Nineties: Visions of Community in Contemporary U.S. Television (Palgrave
Macmillan), which contained a chapter on Seinfeld,
among other TV shows. In addition to his Maxwell degree, Arras holds a
bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public
Communications.
For more on the book, see this syracuse.com
article and this publisher’s page.
08/26/20