1st Edition
Watching TV Is Not Required Thinking About Media and Thinking About Thinking
This book uses a social world–today's undergraduate students' ubiquitous everyday experience of television–as a vehicle for helping awaken students to the true possibilities for learning and their responsibilities inherent in achieving those goals. The book also introduces students to the social construction of reality embedded in the experience of TV. The lead author Barney McGrane is one of the most accomplished and successful teachers of sociology in the United States today and is also the co-author with John Gunderson and the late Inge Bell of the classic book for teaching This Book Is Not Required: An Emotional Survival Manual For Students.
CH 1 – PARENT TV: OUR THIRD PARENT
CH 2 – IDENTITY TV: YOU ARE WHAT YOU WATCH
CH 3 – REALITY TV: TV IS A PLACE WHERE WE LIVE
CH 4 – CONSUMERISM TV: YOU ARE WHAT YOU WANT
CH 5 – RELATIONSHIP TV: I DON’T REALLY LOVE YOU, I LOVE GORDON’S GIN/JOHN CUSAK
CH 6 – CHILDREN’S TV: SATURDAY MORING GHETTO
CH 7 – MIRROR TV: LOOKING GLASS SELF
Ch 8 – UN-TV: NO TV AND MEDITATION TV
Biography
Barney McGrane has a huge following among lower-division sociology instructors in North America. Barney has taught literally thousands of students at UCLA, UC Irvine, Pitzer, Colby College, and now Chapman University during his career. He is a mesmerizing teacher.
John Gunderson has a Ph.D in education from Claremont Graduate School and was named "outstanding master’s student of the year" from Chapman University. He teaches as an adjunct at Chapman University
"McGrane and Gunderson have put together an extraordinarily provocative stream of sociologically inspired responses to television. Nothing could be more "relevant" to students, and in the right hands, this is a resource for a learning experience that at once maximizes critical and creative thinking. McGrane and Gunderson give new life to sociological thinking."—Jack Katz, Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
