Overview
due Tuesday Worksheet 1 - Foucault
Answer these questions in 2-4 sentences each after reading Michel Foucault's "What is an Author?"
1. How does Foucault define the relationship between the author and the text?
2. What is the role of the name of the author?
3. What are the four features of author function?
4. How does Foucault differential between literary ‘authors’ and those such as Aristotle, Freud, and Marx?
5. How is our relationship to authors of discursive ideas different from that of scientific ideas?
Due Thrusday Worksheet 2 - Caldwell
Answer these questions in 2-4 sentences each after reading John Caldwell's "Industrial Auteur Theory" from Production Culture.
1. What is auteur theory? How has it been challenged in the last 40 years?
2. What does Caldwell say we should do when taking in narratives about showrunners and other media auteurs? Why?
3. What role does "idea theft" play in the Hollywood system?
4. Why does Caldwell refer to team writing, note giving, and production meetings as “monitoring rituals”?
5. How are traditional distinctions between media professions broken down in modern television?
Due Sunday Discussion Post
The response should include a quick summary of the week’s two articles’ main arguments and methods of analysis, as well as the aspects that you want us to focus on in our discussion, and the questions that remain or that it opened up for you. They should be approximately 200 words.