Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection [Book]

Women in History Cover ImageI’m excited to announce that the 4-volume encyclopedia I’ve been working on with my friend and colleague Peg Lamphier for the last two years — Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection has now appeared in the ABC-CLIO Spring Catalog.

We’d like to thank the many colleagues too numerous to mention who contributed to the research and writing!

Ask your local public or university library to order a set!

Link: Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection

Amazon.com: Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection

Great Review for Season 9 of DOCTOR WHO!

You all know my affinity for the good Doctor so I was happy to see today’s review of season 9 by Los Angeles Times reviewer Robert Lloyd (because if we don’t start including the names of writers of things we like, how can we expect anyone to include our names?) found the new season to be back on track for fun and frolic! (also I think much can be learned about writing from reading reviews of other people’s writing and trying not to make the same mistakes they make!).  Watch the film or movie, then read the review and see whether you agree or not.  Wildly educational exercise for writers!

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Rosanne’s Published Works on display at Stephens College Library

Stephens library display of Rosannes books

Thanks to Dan Kammer, the Library Director at Stephens College, for including a display of my publications in an exhibition of work by various faculty members this month.  It looks great – and hopefully the students will be intrigued enough to stop by and read some of the books – or use them for research in their own academic adventures!

Thurber Prize for Humor Finalists are all Female – 1st Time in History of the Prize

Though I teach One-Hour Drama I thought it would be cool to highlight the fact that for the first time ever the 3 finalists for the Thurber Prize for Humor Writing are all female. The prize is named after James Thurber of Ohio who wrote The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and years of New Yorker cartoons (even after he went blind!).

Thurbers-seal-cartoon

We should be reading these women:

Roz Chast, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

Annabelle Gurwitch, I See You Made an Effort: Compliments, Indignities, and Survival Stories from the Edge of 50

Julie Schumacher, Dear Committee Members

link: Thurber Prize for American Humor

 

Trailer for Trumbo movie Looks Great!

I love movies about writers and the power of writing so when I noticed the trailer for Trumbo, based on the life of blacklisted Hollywood writer Dalton Trumbo, I had to see it right away – and I did and now I recommend you see both the trailer – and the film.  The script was adapted from the book by Bruce Cook (which is also worth reading) by John McNamara, who I remember pitching to when he was a producer on The Adventures of Briscoe County, Jr. (which was the show he did before his long run on Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, which itself was the ‘new Superman’ before Smallville arrived on the scene).

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Anyway, what I enjoyed about the trailer is the idea that this is not just a plot-laden movie about the guy who wrote Roman Holiday (another movie you should see) with a front during the Blacklist;  Trumbo the movie looks to be a movie about ideas and the freedom of speech and thought that is at the heart of the Constitution of the United States.  As I said, I love movies about writers and the journeys to find their own voices and Trumbo’s story is one of those – along with the chance to make choices about what is worth standing for in this world – and the fact that those choices can lead to sacrifices – he spent 11 months in jail.  And as you’ll see in the trailer – John Goodman is in the movie so how can it miss?

Top 30 Network Programs by household ratings

Random fun from my research – where were you (or were you) for the 1966-67 Television Season? Which shows did you watch then and which in reruns years later?)

Top 30 Network Programs by household ratings
(Households with TVs – 55.15 million)

Bonanza (NBC) – 29.1
The Red Skelton Hour (CBS) – 28.2
The Andy Griffith Show (CBS) – 27.4
The Lucy Show (CBS) – 26.2
The Jackie Gleason Show (CBS) – 25.3
Green Acres (CBS) – 24.6
Daktari (CBS) – 23.4
Bewitched (ABC) – 23.4
The Beverly Hillbillies (CBS) – 23.4
Gomer Pyle USMC (CBS) – 22.8
The Ed Sullivan Show (CBS) – 22.8
The Virginian (NBC) – 22.8
The Lawrence Welk Show (ABC) – 22.8
A Family Affair (CBS) – 22.6
The Dean Martin Show (NBC) – 22.6
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (CBS) – 22.2
Hogan’s Heroes (CBS) – 21.8
CBS Friday Night Movies (CBS) – 21.8
The Wonderful World of Disney (NBC) – 21.5
NBC Saturday Night Movies (NBC) – 21.4
Dragnet 1967 (NBC) – 21.2
Get Smart (NBC) – 21.0
Rat Patrol (ABC) – 20.9
Petticoat Junction (CBS) – 20.9
That Girl (ABC) – 20.8
Bob Hope (NBC) – 20.7
Tarzan (NBC) – 20.5
ABC Sunday Night Movie (ABC) – 20.4
The FBI (ABC) – 20.2
I Spy (NBC) – 20.2
My Three Sons (CBS) – 20.2
CBS Thursday Night Movies (CBS) – 20.2

Reading Tim Conway’s autobiography made me smile…

Spent the first day of my summer vacation (which didn’t start until all grades everywhere were calculated and posted) in my most favorite way to spend a day – reading an entire book in my garden in a series of sittings (interrupted by tea and lunch and hanging laundry and dinner, etc).    What book you ask?  Something deep and dark like War and Peace or Dr. Zhivago?  Nope.  I opted to open my summer with the autobiography of an old friend, though we’ve never met (though why he never appeared as a guest on Touched by an Angel is a mystery to me).  Tim Conway, aka Ensign Parker on McHale’s Navy; aka Barnacleboy on Spongebob Squarepants aka a dozen crazy characters on The Carol Burnett Show

Why did I choose that to begin my summer reading?  Partly because he was raised in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, where my Mom used to take me for ice cream treats during the summer; partly because he graduated from Bowling Green State University (as Doug and I did); and partly because I knew it would be full of fun tidbits about the early days of radio and television both in Cleveland (where he worked with Ernie Anderson before he became Ghoulardi) and in Los Angeles.  Just about as funny as the book Jim Backus (Thurston Howell III) wrote with his wife, Henny, in the 1980s.

Conway’s book is full of funny stories about scrambling to fill time on early radio and television shows and honest discussions of being happy in life even if you’re always the second banana, never the star.  He talks about being raised by his immigrant parents – Dad Daniel from Ireland and Mom Sophia from Romania — and then raising his own 6 kids with their lessons in his mind all the time.  He talks about being bilingual (English and Romanian) and losing that second language as he grew up.  He talks about the joy and honor of meeting and working with the great stars of his childhood movie-viewing including Cary Grant and Ernest Borgnine and his enthusiasm for all the blessings in his life is catchy.

I smiled often until page 70 when I fell on the floor laughing (much as I did while watching all those Carol Burnett shows in elementary school) and pretty much never got back in my chair.  It was too precarious to ponder.  I found myself regaling Doug with several of the stories even as he tried to read something else.  If you’d like to spend some time in happy company I highly recommend What’s so Funny?

See all my favorite book and DVD picks in the WelchWrite Bookstore

Surprised by the Good Read GIDGET turned out to be!

While I have much grading to do as always, I was drawn to spend the weekend reading Gidget (by Frederick Kohner) thanks to my friend Ken Lazebnik’s book Hollywood Digs which includes an interview with the real life Franzie Kohner who IS Gidget.  In fact, she kindly appeared with Ken at a book reading he did in Malibu recently.

Before actually reading the book I didn’t know gidget stood for “girl midget” since she was so small on her surfboard (and now wonder how many women were named Gidget without now that); I didn’t know her father was a refugee from Nazi Germany who came to LA to be a screenwriter; and I didn’t know the book was going to be so good (both Gidget AND Hollywood Digs! – which I  knew would be good because Ken is such a wonderfully evocative writer). I suggest them both.

Turns out when it was released  Gidget was compared favorably to Catcher in the Rye by book critics… and probably  lost its edge in readers’ minds thanks to the bubblegum reputation the films gave the story – compounded by the fact that it was a girl’s coming of age story and not a boy’s.  I learned long ago in teaching American Literature, to an all girl high school of all things, that educators believe girls will read about boy protagonists (in an effort to understand them enough to hook them) but boys will not be as enthusiastic about reading the story of a girl protagonist).  So schools adjusted and chose mostly books with male protagonists for high school students of both sexes to study, which means boys lost the chance to learn the lessons first generation immigrants surviving economic hardship from A Tree Grows in Brooklynamong other losses.

Of course, the advent of such things as The Hunger Games trilogy seems to belie that idea — but you’ll notice publishers felt that in order to engage boy readers Katniss needed to wield a weapon, not merely master a craft like surfing.  Another reason to return to reading Gidget.

And all of this mulling reminds me of a TED Talk on How Movies Teach Manhood that  I showed students the other day by Colin Stokes, director of communications for the non-profit Citizen Schools.  He compares the heroine of The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy Gale from Kansas, to Luke Skywalker of everyone’s much beloved Star Wars and finds that Dorothy triumphs by mastering the leadership skills of working with others and bringing them together toward a common goal that benefits all while Luke triumphs as an individual by mastering a violent skill that requires killing the enemy to win.

My comparison between Gidget and Catcher seems similar in that Gidget experiments in the world of romance and sex without needing to make the acquaintance of a hooker – yet high schools read Holden’s story as literature and are never exposed to Gidget’s story at all.

Torchwood Declassified Available in the U.S. with my chapter on “Children of Earth”

Happy to say that I just received my copy of Torchwood Declassified in the mail – it has a chapter about the 3rd season arc “Children of Earth” that I co-wrote with my friend, Martin Griffin and for which we all trooped to Cardiff a few summers ago to deliver the paper that became the chapter. Great memories – and a great line for the CV!

Video: Dr. Rosanne Welch speaks on “Presenting Yourself Well on Paper” for CareerCamp Online 2009.

Dr. Rosanne Welch speaks on “Presenting Yourself Well on Paper” for CareerCamp Online 2009.

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More video from CareerCamp and Douglas E. Welch