Perspectives from a Professor
During the Teachers, Teaching, and Media Conference at Wake Forest University March 2-4, 2017, I will participate on a panel with my colleagues Molly Keener and Hu Womack to present a case study demonstrating how to integrate a production element into a critical media studies course using electronic publishing technology.
Continue reading “Integrating Production and Critical Media Studies”
The first time I saw Moonlight, I thought it was exceptional.
Then, a question from a student in my Media Theory and Criticism class made me clarify my assessment.
I had been talking that day about how I liked certain things about La La Land, wished Loving had also been nominated for Best Picture, and — yet — sort of wanted Arrival to win the Best Picture Award because of its craft and geopolitical message, a message of unity we sorely need in these trouble times. On the other hand, I continued, Moonlight is unprecedented and speaks to gender, sexuality, and culture in other ways that are critically important.
Yesterday afternoon, I led a discussion of the 1999 TV movie Tuesdays With Morrie at a Triad funeral home for the kickoff of “It’s About Life — A Death-Defying Film Series.”
Sponsored by the Café Mortal and Death Café groups in Greensboro, this was the first of six movies chosen “to provoke comfortable discussions of death and dying.”
I didn’t inject a great deal of media criticism into the conversation (when asked at one point what my students would think of this movie, I admitted they would probably find it “cheesy”).