Moving forward with our media studies search

12Nov09

Three months ago, I posted information about Middlebury’s search for a comparative media studies faculty member. I’ve been quite excited about the discussion and feedback I’ve gotten, highlighting the benefits of opening up the black box of the faculty hiring process. So as the search proceeds, I want to post an update.
We have received over [...]

Filed under: Academia, Media Studies, Middlebury, Teaching   |  12 Comments
Tags: job search

Teaching TV, Twitter, and my Textbook

10Sep09

The semester launched this week at Middlebury. Due to a little enrollment shuffling, I’m only teaching one course this semester: Television and American Culture. (I’ll certainly be sufficiently busy reading the hundreds of job applicants and actively working on the college website makeover project!) This is the first time through using my textbook, Television and [...]

Filed under: Academia, Middlebury, TV Textbook, Teaching, Television   |  3 Comments
Tags: twitter

Reflections on Teaching The Wire

27Aug09

First, I should indulge in self-promotion to link to this well-done profile of me and the Film & Media Culture program at Middlebury, from the local free weekly, Seven Days. Aside from reminding me of my rapidly graying hair, I’m quite happy with how it turned out!
The author found me first through a link to [...]

Filed under: Academia, Media Studies, Middlebury, Press, TV Shows, Teaching, Television   |  4 Comments
Tags: The Wire

Looking for a Comparative Media Scholar

03Aug09

One of the most interesting, exhausting, frustrating, and exciting things you can do as a faculty member is serving on a search committee–interesting to see the broad range of work that emerging scholars are doing, exhausting from the time it takes to read hundreds of files and conduct lengthy interviews, frustrating because in the end [...]

Filed under: Academia, Media Studies, Meta-blogging, Middlebury, New Media, Teaching, Vermont   |  54 Comments
Tags: job search

Tell My Students What TV To Watch

23Jul09

I’m in the midst of drafting another long article, both to feed the blog and meet a lingering book chapter deadline, and head off-the-grid next week for some family vacation. But in the meantime, I’d like to crowdsource some brainstorming for my fall syllabus. I’ll be teaching Television & American Culture, a course I’ve taught [...]

Filed under: Middlebury, Narrative, TV Shows, Teaching, Television   |  37 Comments

Transmedia Storytelling in Television: A Student Thesis

14Jul09

One of the pleasures of working with Middlebury College students is advising independent work on their senior projects. While I don’t have the opportunity to work with graduate students on their dissertations, every once in awhile I have undergraduate students who do exemplary work that feels quite similar to a condensed version of the graduate [...]

Filed under: Media Studies, Middlebury, Narrative, TV Shows, Technology, Television   |  1 Comment
Tags: Lost, transmedia

Listen to me babble

19May09

Just a quick pointer to a podcast: I had the pleasure of recording a podcast with Tim Anderson for his series The Lion’s Share. The series is a great project, opening up the hood on media scholars’ processes of writing, teaching, and thinking about media. Tim & I talked about the impact of the economy [...]

Filed under: Media Studies, MediaCommons, Meta-blogging, Middlebury, Narrative, Teaching, Television   |  1 Comment
Tags: Battlestar, podcast, The Wire

Burning up the internets

13Apr09

Just a couple of quick links & promotions before I carve out the time for a real blog post:
I had the pleasure and honor of doing an interview with Henry Jenkins about my new book, Television & American Culture. Today, Henry published the first part of the interview, with a very flattering introduction. I assume [...]

Filed under: Meta-blogging, Middlebury, TV Shows, TV Textbook, Technology, Television   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: planet forward, Self-Promotion

Essential tools for navigating digital culture

10Apr09

I’ve been asked by my friend/colleague/Dean/Provost Tim Spears to contribute to his blog, One Dean’s View, offering a post on a few digital tools that I find essential for navigating my digital life. Here’s what I had to say, reblogged:
I am known as one of the more technologically engaged/addicted faculty members at Middlebury. Luckily, it [...]

Filed under: Academia, Middlebury, New Media, Technology   |  2 Comments
Tags: tools

Vermont’s Governor Wallace

06Apr09

Today Vermont had an opportunity to lead the nation in the fight for equality and justice by becoming the first state to legislate marriage equality without a mandate from the courts. Today, Governor Jim Douglas stood on the wrong side of history and vetoed the bill that had overwhelming support from the legislature. There is [...]

Filed under: Media Politics, Middlebury, Vermont   |  2 Comments
Tags: gay rights, marriage equality

Mulling the future of public access TV

31Mar09

Since I moved to Vermont in 2002, I have been on the board of Middlebury Community Television, our local public access channel. Yesterday, the board sponsored a community media forum, where we invited members of our community to come together to discuss the role of a small public access channel in a small town today [...]

Filed under: Media Politics, Middlebury, TV Industry, Technology, Television, Vermont   |  4 Comments
Tags: public access

Teaching The Wire

06Feb09

My spring semester starts next week, and as I believe both in making my teaching work publicly available to the world, and in publicly acknowledging that teaching is my primary job 9 months of the year, here are the syllabi for my courses.The first is an old standard, Theories of Popular Culture – I’ve gotten [...]

Filed under: Academia, Middlebury, TV Shows, Teaching, Television   |  9 Comments
Tags: The Wire

Some new shows you’ll never see

10Nov08

One of the frustrating things about teaching is the grading. In part, it’s because of the tedium and repetition involved, as any professor will tell you. But another frustration is when students do great work, it’s too private, limited to the exchange between professor and individual student. In the past, I’ve blogged student work in [...]

Filed under: Middlebury, TV Shows, Teaching   |  1 Comment

Live-blogging

04Nov08

Just a link to Midd Blog, where I’ll be weighing in with a number of Middlebury students & faculty throughout the day about the election. With my fingers crossed…

Filed under: Media Politics, Middlebury   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: election

This semester’s teaching

19Sep08

Just a couple of quick links to anyone interested in my courses this fall. I’m teaching my bread & butter intro course, Television & American Culture, which follows the structure of my forthcoming textbook (which I’ll be plugging mercilessly until it’s released in the spring). I’m also teaching the senior seminar for Film & Media [...]

Filed under: Middlebury, Teaching   |  2 Comments
Tags: syllabi