Well, Watcher Junior readers, I’m back. I’ve had a very productive summer, everywhere but this blog. I wrote 10,000 words on season one (most of which will show up in The Essential Whedon Reader). I did a roundtable at Slayage 4 on teaching Whedon, which connected nicely on my article on the effect of spoilers in teaching television studies in Buffy in the Classroom. If you’d like to get snapshots of the articles that were delivered at the conference, see the conference report I co-wrote. And then there’s the article on Glee’s use of disability stereotypes, including the Joss Whedon helmed episode, “Dream On”. More on that when it comes out, but you saw parts of it here first!
Anyway, I’m writing now because I thought you might like to see the syllabus for my Buffy seminar. The catch? I’m revamping it, which means it’s not finished yet.
But that’s a bonus for you, because you, dear reader, get to provide me with advice. My seminar’s students will now be watching the episodes at home, not in class. That's opened up two classes (and an extra 45 minutes of discussion in each class).
The first extra class is being used on having a second class to break down "Restless." The second one, however, is down to the following possibilities, with the content in parenthesis. These are your choices for votes:
Anyway, I’m writing now because I thought you might like to see the syllabus for my Buffy seminar. The catch? I’m revamping it, which means it’s not finished yet.
But that’s a bonus for you, because you, dear reader, get to provide me with advice. My seminar’s students will now be watching the episodes at home, not in class. That's opened up two classes (and an extra 45 minutes of discussion in each class).
The first extra class is being used on having a second class to break down "Restless." The second one, however, is down to the following possibilities, with the content in parenthesis. These are your choices for votes:
- Pangs (my article “Understanding the Espensode” in Buffy Goes Dark and like seven people have written on it re:colonialism)
- Fool for Love (Queer Eye for that Vampire Guy, Spike as a Courtly Lover)
- Superstar (would be a companion class to my Buffy fanvid class that ends the semester)
- Smile Time (Abbott's TV Milestones, supplemented by a few things from Reading Angel)
- Our Mrs. Reynolds (Investigating Firefly and Serenity, ending as clearest declaration of Whedon’s humanism)
- Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog (as Resistant Text, Commentary! The Musical)
And, if there's a good suggestion for a Dollhouse episode, I'll probably yoink something from this Slayage issue. The latter three series, of course, would be used to talk about auteurism in television as well, given that they're not about the Buffyverse.
Which would you use in a Buffy seminar for juniors who are media majors?
I'm not sure about corresponding articles, but for Dollhouse, I would suggest "The Attic" as a companion piece to "Restless" or "Nightmares."
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