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

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

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

New book on its way!

22Jan09

Observant visitors to the site might notice a new image on the right – the cover of my new book! Television & American Culture, the textbook I’ve been writing with intermittent furiousness for the past four years, has gone to press and will be released in mid-February. If you want to learn more, visit the [...]

Filed under: Books, TV Textbook, Teaching, Television   |  1 Comment

Preview of my Television & American Culture book

20Nov08

Update: The book is out – details on the Television & American Culture website.
A couple of people have asked me about my forthcoming book, Television & American Culture, which will be out this spring from Oxford University Press. Alas it may not be out in time for spring courses, unless it will only be used [...]

Filed under: TV Textbook, Teaching, Television   |  5 Comments
Tags: Self-Promotion

Fair Use for Educators – and The Chronicle’s continuing poor coverage

11Nov08

Today the Center for Social Media officially released its latest in its series of excellent fair use guides, The Code of Best Practices for Fair Use in Media Literacy Education. It’s must reading for anyone involved in media pedagogy or policy.
However, in what has become a trend, I must protest the way the Chronicle of [...]

Filed under: Academia, Copyright, Fair Use, Media Studies, Teaching   |  4 Comments

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

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

Teaching Technology: Video Games

12May08

Here’s the third entry in my series of posts highlighting my students’ work from my Media Technology course. One key medium that we studied was videogames, and it has been a challenge to think about how to create a project that allows students to make media criticism using videogame technology – if I had the [...]

Filed under: Middlebury, New Media, Teaching, Technology, Videogames   |  1 Comment
Tags: machinima, rock band

Being a Researcher at a Liberal Arts College

25Apr08

One of the things I’ve found myself doing more and more lately is talking to junior faculty and new PhDs about the job market and career options. I enjoy such conversations, mostly because it allows me to vicariously experience the exciting possibilities tied to starting a career, with none of the attached uncertainties and risks! [...]

Filed under: Academia, Middlebury, Not Quite TV, Teaching   |  10 Comments
Tags: faculty, liberal arts

Teaching Technology: Remix Video

22Apr08

Following up my previous post sharing my students’ projects in my Media Technology course, the second assignment was to create a remix video that in some way offered a critical examination of media, posting it to YouTube to potentially generate some feedback from people who stumble across it. One of my pet peeves about teaching [...]

Filed under: Academia, Middlebury, New Media, Teaching   |  9 Comments
Tags: mashup, remix video, youtube