TELEVISION, MEDICINE AND MELODRAMA:
York University Professor Examines TV Doctors in the US and Canada

TORONTO, Jan. 27, 1999 -- ER, Chicago Hope, L.A. Doctors -- the medical melodrama is yet another example of how our perception of reality is shaped by what we see on television -- this according to York University Professor Janine Marchessault, who will deliver a lecture to the York community Thursday, Jan. 28, 1999.

Hosted by York University's Founders College and the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought, Marchessault's lecture will examine the way medicine and scientific information is fictionalized in popular television medical dramas. The following questions will be addressed:

How does popular American and Canadian TV portray health care and illness?

What do we learn from this portrayal?

How are the Canadian shows different from the American formulas?

What does it teach us about the science of medicine and the ethical issues so intrinsic to our everyday lives?

Marchessault teaches film and television studies at York University's Faculty of Fine Arts. She is president of the Film Studies Association of Canada, and has published works on Quebec, feminist and Canadian cinema, as well as cultural theory. Fluent in French, she can comment on a wide range of topics relating to Quebec cinema, Canadian film and television, experimental film, and women in film and television.

WHO:
Professor Janine Marchessault, Department of Film and Video, Faculty of Fine Arts

WHAT:
Lecture in Comparative Cultural Studies: Television, Medicine and Melodrama: TV Doctors in the US and Canada

WHEN:
Thursday, Jan. 28, 1999, 3:30 p.m.

WHERE:
Founders College, Senior Common Room (305)
York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario

-30-

For more information, please contact:

Sine MacKinnon
Senior Advisor for Media Relations
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 22087

Ken Turriff
Media Relations Officer
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 22086
YU/004/99