VM 403 - Seminar in Comedic Studies

Course Description

"Special seminar offerings in the area of comedic studies. Topics rotate and may include: Chaplin, Queer TV Comedy, and Screwball & Romantic Comedy."

Summer 2022 topic: Norman Lear

Seminar-based course on the life and enduring creative legacy of producer, writer, activist and Emerson alumnus Norman Lear ’44, who is widely credited for redefining American television in the 1970s. Through weekly lectures and pertinent screenings, students will examine how his landmark sitcoms – among them All in the Family, Maude, Sanford and Son, Good Times and The Jeffersons – used comedy to confront important social issues of the day. Also explores his work as one of America’s leading political activists and how he laid the groundwork for confronting controversy in all programming genres in the decades that followed.