Who doesn’t want to take a class where a required text is season one of Friday Night Lights? Professor Jonathon Lupo, new to St. Anselm College, will be opening up the Communication department to his course: Television Communication and Culture.
Lupo described culture’s relationship with television as a “love-hate affair”, remarking on the different stigmas of “boob tube” and “couch potato” that we naturally associate with our time in front of the TV.
His class will explore this relationship by studying it as an art form and business that has the potential to bring people together in new and exploratory ways.
One of the stigmas Professor Lupo counteracts stems from the negative view that television, like video games and movies, has taken the younger generation away from the influences of great literature and “higher” pursuits.
However, Lupo accurately denounced such a stigma as we discussed its importance as a story telling medium. Television acts as vehicle for understanding themes crucial to the development of character and the understanding of underlying foundations that differ between cultures. Instead of viewing TV as limiting development, it instead broadens understandings along with the mediums of literature, music, and other art.
Professor Lupo’s interest in this relationship is contagious; he discussed the various ways which regard television as a field truly developing and open for interpretation.
With an innovative design of study, Lupo’s class contains elements that are certain to keep the conversation moving: In class students are energized by Television clips that allow for instantaneous interpretation, while out of class they partake in original assignments such as watching TV in all different places and manners in order to make their experience strange and new.
By integrating technology in his classroom, Professor Lupo has brought a novel way of regarding an art form that many are apt to dismiss.
More than just providing an interesting new class for St. Anselm students, Television Communication and Culture also invites the promotion of skill-sets crucial to personal and career development. The class will study the aesthetic quality of Television, scholarly criticism concerning it, and the industry itself, as it looks behind the scenes of development and screen writing.
Professor Lupo describes the industry as a “very inclusive field” that is multi-faceted as a business and art form. Furthermore, even without an interest in the specific field, students will develop public speaking skills and work at team building, all areas crucial to the current economy and job market.
Professor Lupo came to St. Anselm College with the intent to develop the student through more intimate and innovative classroom design. His knowledge will continue to open up to the Communication department as he looks towards his future courses.
A special interest in the element of “Tastes” inspires two other courses students should keep an eye on: One explores what entails “bad art” as both aesthetic failures and commercial failures, while the other examines the different fan bases of certain shows and the reasoning behind their fandom.
If Lupo’s courses sound interesting, you should also be sure to look into Professor Machiselli’s course on popular music and the rhetoric of sound. Students are being given an innovative opportunity to pursue the well-loved aspects of media within a vast new array of knowledge.
Popular music and inspiring television shows? It sounds more like a Saturday afternoon than a Monday morning.