Category Archives: course info

Hi, all. I thought I’d drop a quick post here (which will remain sticky so that it stays visible) about the status of the blog — or, more specifically, about what your status should be as of right now with respect to the blog. We’re 8 weeks into the semester, which means that, given one post off for fall break, one post off if you’ve taken your freebie, and a couple of comments off just for fun, you should each have produced at least 6 blog posts and 14 comments. You should be able to check your status by clicking on “posts” and “comments” on the dashboard. Remember that the number of blog posts doesn’t include your term paper proposals or bibliographies, which are add-ons.

Most of you are in reasonable shape, but there are a couple of you who are a bit behind (and several of you who are really behind). We’ve only got 5 weeks left in the semester, so there’s not much time to get caught up — and I really, really don’t want a flood of posts in the last week of classes to which no one can respond, given that the purpose of the blog is ongoing, consistent discussion. So do try to catch up sooner rather than later.

If you want a more specific assessment of your grade as of right now, email me or come by during office hours!

Hi, all. Alas, the publisher of the HBO Reader that we’re reading the chapter from for tomorrow never sent me the copy I’d requested, so I haven’t been able to post it for you. I did discover, however, that it’s readable via Google Books, so please do read it that way. See you tomorrow.

Folks: please remember to use the category “proposal” for your proposals — if you don’t select a category, it’ll automatically default to “reading responses,” and I’ll have a hard time finding your proposal to comment on it.

Added: And, if you’ve already posted your proposal, please go back and fix the category; you can do this by clicking on “edit” under Posts on the dashboard.

Hi, all. A few announcements from the end of class for those of you who may have missed them:

Next week, we’re going to turn our attention a bit toward medium specificity, thinking a bit more about authorship on television itself, as well as about adaptation — how narratives move from one medium to another. And we’ll focus in more on Homicide than we have to this point.

I’ve posted the first paper assignment, both as a word doc here in Resources and as a post on the blog. The first stage of that assignment — the proposal — is due Monday, so read the assignment carefully and let me know if you have questions. And you should read the Thompson chapter & finish Homicide for Monday as well.

I’ll really really really hope to be back with you LIVE and IN PERSON on Monday. In the meantime, email me if you have questions…

For those of you who asked about it, the Caldwell essay has now been linked on the syllabus, and the file added to Sakai. Happy reading, and see you Monday.

This site is yours to make of what you want, a space for further interaction, for exploration, for testing out some of the ideas that come up in our discussions or in your papers. You’ll be expected to post your responses to our class reading here on the blog, but I also want to see you trying things out here for yourselves, working actively to make this blog a useful space for discussing the texts we’re reading this semester.

So any number of things might provide a good topic for a blog post. Here are a few suggestions (slightly modified from a similar list my colleague Meg Worley gave a class of hers):

• Isn’t it interesting the way that passage X seems to predict contemporary phenomenon Y?
• I found this cool article online that you should all read!
• Does “jargonterm” mean P or Q — or something else entirely?
• Wow, reading Z really reminds me of last week’s episode of Lost.
• I could use some feedback on this idea I’ve been wrestling with…
• Did she say A or B in class yesterday? I forgot to write it down.
• Hey, I’m in a play this weekend, and y’all should come!

You’ll no doubt find other things you want to post about, too — things you stumble across on the web that the rest of the class should see, things you find in your research that the rest of the class might be interested in. This kind of sharing is what makes group blogs exciting; I’ll look forward to seeing what you come up with.