Wire in the College Classroom

Karen Dillon teaches literature and writing at Blackburn College in Carlinville, Illinois, where she specializes in American and African-American literature. She lives in Carlinville. Naomi Crummey is chair of the Department of English and Communications at Blackburn College where she teaches writing and literature. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vIntroduction (Karen Dillon and Naomi Crummey) 1I. MediaIt Was TV: Teaching HBO’s The Wire as a Television Series (Todd M. Sodano) 7The Angriest Auteur on Television: Teaching Media Authorship Through David Simon (Alex M. Kupfer) 32Post–Network Era Television, Cultural Hierarchies and Sociological Uses of The Wire Beyond Urban Inequality (Michael L. Wayne) 47II. Writing and Narrative“Dope on the damn table”: Narrative Discourse in The Wire and African American Literature (Paul D. Reich) 61“They’re not learning for our world; they’re learning for theirs”: Changing the First Year Writing Experience (Karen Dillon and Naomi Crummey) 76Exercises in Revision and Form (Michael Ennis) 93Closure in the Classroom: “Final Grades” (C.W. Marshall and Tiffany Potter) 108III. Ethics and Rhetoric“The gods will not save you”: Teaching Ethics with The Wire (James W. McCarty III) 127Good Lives in Tragic Worlds (Nathan P. Gilmour) 143Wallace’s Choice (Tom Nurmi) 160IV. Education and LiteracyReading the Scene: Discourse, Literacy and Pedagogy Through The Wire (Daniel Listoe) 179The Wire at a Distance: The ­Socio-Cultural Determination of Meaning and the Challenges of Online Learning (Matt Applegate) 196Using The Wire to Teach Cultural Competency in Higher Education (Tia Sherèe Gaynor) 212About the Contributors 233Index 235