ENGL 3750 WSU Fall 12 22571 (https://weber.instructure.com/courses/115913) → Syllabus ENGL 3750 WSU Fall 12 22571 Change Home Page Layout | See Course Stream Jump to Today ENGL 3750: Television as Literature (or, Advanced Studies in Firefly) v. 1.0 MWF 12:30 - 1:20 Dr. Scott Rogers | EH 448 |
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[email protected]) | http://faculty.weber.edu/srogers (http://faculty.weber.edu/srogers) Office Hours TBA | 801-626-7502 The Course: The average American watches about 5 hours of television a day. We are told that this is bad. We are told that television is bad for us, that it is bad for our families, and that it is wasting our time. But not all television is that way. Some television shows have what we might call “literary pretensions.” Shows such as Twin Peaks, Homicide: Life on the Street, The Wire, The Sopranos, Deadwood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars, Battlestar Galactica, and LOST have been both critically acclaimed and the subject of much academic study. In this course, we will focus our attention on one such television series: Firefly. Like his earlier series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Joss Whedon’s critically acclaimed series Firefly has enjoyed tremendous interest—from casual viewers, devoted fans, and from academics who find the series worthy of critical academic attention. In this course, we will examine Firefly not only as fans, but with rigorous, critical, academic attention. We will approach each episode of Firefly, and the film Serenity, in an active and critical fashion, paying attention to the standard literary devices (e.g.