Our conference “Cultural Distinctions Remediated: Beyond the High, the Low, and the Middle” begins today, December 15, 2011. Jason Mittell will start things off this evening (6:00 pm in the Niedersachsensaal at Königsworther Platz 1) with a talk on “The Complexity of Quality: Cultural Hierarchies & Aesthetic Evaluation in Contemporary Television” (see also here for a preview). Tomorrow, there will be six talks divided into two panels (see here for the full program, with links to all individual abstracts). And Lynn Spigel will wrap things up on Saturday morning with her talk on “Designer TV: Television and the Taste for Modernism in Mid-Century America”.