celebrity gossip, academic style

Just a brief post to guide you to my two new syllabi and course blogs for two of the three classes I’m teaching here at Whitman: Hollywood Stars and Television & American Culture.

A few caveats:

**The students I’ll be teaching are either a.) upperclassmen or b.) film majors. Note the term use, though — they’ve taken film classes, but they haven’t taken any television or cultural studies courses (at least not media-based cultural studies). (That’s part of the problem with small liberal arts colleges with nascent media studies programs — in the case of Whitman, there’s one full time professor teaching film, a smattering of film courses offered outside of the department, and a Rhetorician in the department teaching film criticism.)

**Television & American Culture isn’t History of Broadcasting. Indeed, if I could revise the title of the course now, it’d be Contemporary Television & American Culture. At first, I was planning to incorporate much more historical television (and broadcasting history more generally) in the syllabus, but there simply was not enough space or time. If I get “optioned” to continue in the Fall, I’d most likely teach a History of Broadcasting class to supplement this one. I’ll be working hard to make sure the class doesn’t end up ahistorical, but in some ways, the fact that these students have never taken a television course allows me to play with all the fun stuff.

**I’m so excited for the Stars class that I can’t even conjure a proper metaphor to indicate how excited I am. I suppose this is what all teachers feel like when they finally get to teach a class wholly based on things that they love and that matter to them. This obviously also made settling on topics, stars, screenings, and readings super difficult, and the syllabus has gone through a number of holistic changes. I “borrowed” a few ideas/readings from Christine Becker’s excellent syllabus for Movie Stardom and Celebrity Culture at Notre Dame.

**Twitter just flat out didn’t work last semester; I honestly don’t know how many kids bring computers to class at Whitman (I never did, but that was seven years ago), but I still think kids are figuring out how Twitter works, and most don’t even have accounts, let alone use it on a daily basis. (I do think Twitter works effectively in classes on New Media — but it’s harder when the medium itself isn’t the focus of study). I’ll be truly interested to see how Ben Aslinger’s strategy for using Twitter works.

**I am, however, switching quizzing for to forced compelled blog discussion once a week, facilitated by an opening question or two. My class size is small (20 in each), which will hopefully encourage more engagement between students (instead of each response simply speaking to me, or to my question). Again, we’ll see. I’m also continuing with “Supplemental Screenings,” for which students view an additional film and think through the ways in which it complements/complicates the screening, reading, and lectures from the week and then post on them.

The goal of these screenings is simple: GET STUDENTS TO WATCH MORE THINGS. I’m always dismayed by how little time students find to watch old/new media (because they’re focusing on doing the reading for my class and others), and this is a way of making the “work” into actual screening of media. Students in my History of the Moving Image class did an incredible job with it last semester, posting screen shots, close analysis, YouTube videos, etc. to, er, supplement their supplemental screenings.

I still have two weeks before I start teaching, so any suggestions — for additional supplemental screenings, readings, additional topics, etc. — would be wholly welcomed and appreciated.