Watching the Wire
Watching the Wire: Urban America and Serial Television Frequently hailed as one of television’s great masterpieces, The Wire shines a light on urban decay in 21st-century America, creating a dramatic portrait of Baltimore’s police, drug trade, and other institutions over five serialized seasons. In this course we will watch and discuss this remarkable—and remarkably entertaining—series twenty years after its debut, placing it within the dual contexts of urban American society and television storytelling. This is a time-intensive course (60 hours of TV!), focused on close viewing, critical analysis of race and policing, and research into The Wire’s social contexts, aesthetic practices, and politics of representation.
Watching the Wire: Urban America and Serial Television Frequently hailed as one of television’s great masterpieces, The Wire shines a light on urban decay in 21st-century America, creating a dramatic portrait of Baltimore’s police, drug trade, and other institutions over five serialized seasons. In this course we will watch and discuss this remarkable—and remarkably entertaining—series twenty years after its debut, placing it within the dual contexts of urban American society and television storytelling. This is a time-intensive course (60 hours of TV!), focused on close viewing, critical anal …Read more
This was a great first year seminar. It was really interesting and I loved learning more about the show The Wire and the social contexts of the show. Jason was a great teacher for the first year seminar and really helped with writing. He's a tougher grader but that helped me improve my writing a lot. He assigns a lot of readings and you can get away with skimming them but you def have to know a bit about the readings to participate in class.
This was a great first year seminar. It was really interesting and I loved learning more about the show The Wire and the social contexts of the show. Jason was a great teacher for the first year seminar and really helped with writing. He's a tougher grader but that helped me improve my writing a lot. He assigns a lot of readings and …Read more
This class is interesting but the viewings almost double the class time. Additionally, the papers are always a work in progress and as a result of this I felt as if I was always working on a paper for the entirety of the semester.