Honestly, when I first signed up for this class, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Of course, I figured we would be watching comedies and discussing them, but to what extent or in which way the discussions would be framed weren’t things that I had a preconceived notion of.
That being said, I was pleasantly surprised with the overall structure and content of the class. One of the things that I really enjoyed was the broad range of films and the periods in American history that they covered. If not for this class, I feel pretty confident in saying I would not have sat down to watch a film like “She Done Him Wrong” of my own accord. Mae West was a name I was vaguely familiar with, but had no real exposure to prior to watching this movie for class. I am really glad that this was the film I picked to focus on for that particular week! I had no idea what a legend she was! I actually went on to do a little extra research and found her to be fascinating!
I found the idea of having a class blog to be interesting and effective in a class like this. I enjoyed the format of the blog and the content of the lectures/lessons each week. Your style of writing is engaging and you did an excellent job using historical background, texts, personal experience and observations and the films together. One of the drawbacks of an online class is the lack of real time interaction between the instructor and the students, and also among students.
One of my other classes this semester addressed this by having live Skype video discussions for a handful of students at a time in place of the weekly discussion assignment; this approach may lend itself to a class of this nature. One small thing I was a little disappointed about was just a case of luck of the draw. I missed out on the assignment that I personally found to be the most intriguing (the romantic comedy pitch) because of the rotation for blog posts. Maybe in the future you could replace one of the more ‘standard’ weekly writing assignments with something else more along these lines.
I did enjoy this class quite a bit and found it interesting to take a deeper look at comedies to gain a more well-rounded appreciation for the value they have and the purpose that they can serve in our society. Thanks and best of luck!
