MDST 3406

I had pretty high expectations coming into this class and was a little disappointed. I had never seen The Wire before this class but binged it during the first two weeks and really loved it. I wish the class had been structured differently in terms of spacing out which seasons we were supposed to have watched and then the discussions that followed for that week. Often times, it felt like class discussions were not grounded in the actual show and were more just lectures by the professor on broader topics. I wish there had been class discussions (almost always dominated by the professor) and that the professor would have guided and fostered class discussions better in order to gain the most out of the class and different viewpoints. There was not enough structure/guidance with the assignments either. This is personal to me, but I wish the professor took more time to really learn students' names, as the class is not that large.

I was very disappointed in this course. I thought it was going to be a class about "The Wire", but instead it was a class on social issues related to the television series. Most of your time is spent reading publications that make no mention of the television series, and then you analyze the social issues presented in the publications and occasionally compare these issues to things seen in The Wire. There is very little time spent actually examining the style and cinematography of "The Wire", analyzing aspects of the show unrelated to social issues, or comparing the characters from the show to real-life Baltimore figures. More time is spent by the class patting themselves on the back for being "socially enlightened". This class, though taught in the Media Studies department, is more of a sociology class. Professor Williams tells you this very early on, but it was not clear to me until late in the semester that you rarely actually study media in the class. That being said, the course is not especially difficult. Professor Williams often assigns large amounts of homework but he is not a terribly harsh grader.

Highly recommend this course. Professor Williams does a good job of facilitating conversations on and analyzing complex and heated issues that our society faces today. The Wire serves as an excellent jumping off point for these conversations.