Announcments – Page 31 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

News: Dr. Welch Advises New “Doctor Who” Club on Cal Poly Pomona campus

A bit of news from the Cal Poly Post today — Rosanne

New club to ‘save the world in the name of the Doctor’

[…]

Professors Peg Lamphier and Rosanne Welch are the advisors for the Whovian Society. Saeed was easily able to get both of them to back the club.
“I had Dr. Welch in IGE 120, and she does ‘Doctor Who’ lectures on campus,” said Saeed. “We did an introductory activity in IGE where it really helped us to who we understand who we are. Since I already made a Whovian Society back in high school, that’s also what I talked about.

“Dr. Lamphier is a really good friend to Dr. Welch, and they both work really well together. It was a given that Dr. Lamphier should be our second advisor.”

Welch has been a fan of the show since high school.

“I watched it in the 70s with my college [and] high school friends,” said Welch. “When it was rebooted in 2005, I naturally came back to it. I found it was an interesting, well-written show.”

Welch believes that the show is beneficial for anyone to watch.

“I think it’s a positive show,” said Welch. “A lot of science fiction [television shows] focus on apocalyptic, end-of-the-world zombies eating us stuff, and [the Doctor] focuses on providing the change that will makes the worlds that he visits better.”

[…]

Read the entire article in The Poly Post

‘Bye Al – and Thanks for All the Orange Juice…

The writing world lost Al Martinez today – a beloved columnist from the LA Times who taught me about all the nooks and crannies and characters in Los Angeles when we first moved here. I had the pleasure of having breakfast with him many times at Jerry’s Diner after I began publishing reflections on my neighborhood in the Times. I had the audacity to email him about a column of his I particularly liked and then ask his opinion on one of mine that had recently been published. Al invited me to lunch to chat of TV (since he had written for a few shows) and life in general and it became an irregularly scheduled event for a few years.

He would bring me autographed copies of his latest books and ask MY opinion of HIS writing. The best thing he ever told me/taught me was that he always conducted interviews withOUT a tape recorder. He figured when he went to write the article or column, whatever he remembered was the most interesting part of the interview so that would be all that he needed… That’s the sign of a natural reporter. What I loved about his columns was that he covered real people from all over the city for all those years. AND when the LA Times first let him go after 25 years the outrage from readers was sooooo strong, they instantly rehired him for another few years.

Then I had the guts to ask him to write the Back of Book Blurb for the book Dawn and I co-edited in 2004, Three-Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work, and Family. THAT was a compliment and a great honor. Guess now it’s time to start rereading all his work again. Believe me, it’s worth the read. And Al was sooo worth getting to know.

Al Martinez dies at 85; Times columnist chronicled Southern California life from The Los Angeles Times

Books by Al Martinez

My book, for which Al wrote the blurb:

News: University Library Divulges Rhyme and Reason for Diverse Speakers from Cal Poly PolyCentric

University Library Divulges Rhyme and Reason for Diverse Speakers from Cal Poly PolyCentric

IGE Professor Rosanne Welch gives a lecture on “Doctor Who” at the University Library, which is hosting a lecture series on a variety of topics this quarter.

[…]

Professor Rosanne Welch’s previous two talks on the television show “Dr. Who” were so popular that the library brought her back last month to a packed room for a third lecture. Welch, who teaches in the Interdisciplinary General Education Department, is a television writer and producer and a longtime fan of the BBC show.

[…]

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Talks on Doctor Who covered in Poly Post from Cal Poly Pomona

The Poly Post, student newspaper of Cal Poly Pomona had write-ups on both of my Doctor Who talks. Click through to see the complete articles.

“Dr. Who” presentation attracts many CPP fans

Doctors aren’t known for fighting aliens or time traveling. However, Doctor Who is.

Perhaps that is why so many students crowded the library to hear a presentation on the TV series and novels called “Dr. Who.”

The event that took place Wednesday afternoon was put together in celebration of National Library Week. The fandom behind the books and TV show was the deciding factor in focusing solely on the Dr. Who series.

TV scriptwriter and Cal Poly Pomona faculty for the Department of Interdisciplinary General Education, Rosanne Welch conducted the presentation and spoke not only about the characters of the show, but the shows impact on British and American culture.

She used the popularity of the series to highlight various points on character development, sexism, American culture and racism.

Read the entire article

The Doctor will see you now

“Doctor Who” fans, otherwise known as Whovians, gathered in the third floor of the University Library for “Doctor Who Regenerated” on May 13.

Rosanne Welch, interdisciplinary general education professor at Cal Poly Pomona and avid “Doctor Who” fan, spoke to guests about two of the show’s writers: Russel T. Davies and Steven Moffat, and compared the themes each writer has brought to the popular British television series.

Both writers were involved with the screenwriting for the show since its revival in 2005, with Davies taking charge from 2006-2008, and Moffat following in 2010.

According to Welch, both writers brought different themes that steered the show in different directions. Davies, who worked on the popular British series “Queer as Folk,” continued to portray “Doctor Who” as the “cheesy” children’s program it was during the 1960s while discreetly creating “deep” and “mature” themes for children to grasp.

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News coverage of Rosanne’s “Dr. Who and Culture” Presentation

A few links are popping up from various news sites to the talk on Doctor Who and Culture.

Watch the complete video, Doctor Who and Culture with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Photo: Tom Zasadzinski, Cal Poly Pomona

Photo: Dr. Rosanne Welch – Doctor Who Talk

‘Doctor Who’ and Culture lecture at Cal Poly Pomona from the San Gabriel Valley Tribune

Dr. Rosanne Welch presents “The Doctor Who CHANGED the Sci-Fi Universe” – April 16, 2014 at 1pm

Dr. Rosanne Welch presents The Doctor Who CHANGED the Sci-Fi Universe

Cal Poly Pomona University Library

Wednesday, April 16, 2014
12:00–1:00pm

Location: University Library 4th floor, Special Events Room

Doctor Rosanne Welch, Cal Poly Pomona Faculty from the Department of Interdisciplinary General Education will discuss Doctor Who and how the show has changed television writing. Doctor Welch will further discuss how society looks at culture and gender roles with the use of the Doctor and his companions’ adventures.

News: Cal Poly Pomona: IGE News: IGE professor Dr. Rosanne Welch publishes essay “When White Boys Write Black”

From IGE News at Cal Poly Pomona…

IGE professor Dr. Rosanne Welch publishes essay “When White Boys Write Black”

If there are any Doctor Who fans among the Cal Poly Pomona community, they may want to add Doctor Who and Race: an Anthology (Intellect) to their summer reading list as it contains an essay by Dr. Rosanne Welch of the Cal Poly Pomona IGE Department. Her essay “When White Boys Write Black”, discusses the different ways show runners Russell T. Davies and his successor, Steven Moffat, handle race in the writing the program. It concludes that while Davies characters of color (Mickey, Martha and Rosita) are all three-dimensional, sexualized human beings, Moffat’s (Liz Ten, Mels and Rita) tended toward more one-dimensional, Talented Tenth types. The rest of the anthology looks at the representation of other peoples of color across the 50 life of the iconic British science-fiction program.

Dr. Welch has delivered several papers on the subject of Who and its spin-off, Torchwood. On August 1st a paper co-written with Dr. Martin Griffin (University of Tennessee, Knoxville) — “Crisis of Authority / Authoring Crisis: Decision and Power in Torchwood: Children of Earth” will be published as a chapter in Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television (I.B.Tauris). Based on a paper co-presented at the Torchwood Symposium, University of Glamorgan in Wales, UK in July 2010 it focuses on the way both personal and political authority was presented in the third season of the program.

Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Martin Griffin at Torchwood Symposium, University of Glamorgan in Wales, UK

Dr. Welch will be presenting papers based on these works at the UFVA (University Film and Video Association) Conference at Chapman University this July and the SRN (Screenwriting Research Network) International Conference at the U of Madison this August. She is currently contracted to write The Monkees: A Metatextual Menagerie of Critical Studies for McFarland Publishing.

Watch the presentation from the SRN (Screenwriting Research Network) International Conference at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, “How the Growing Popularity of the English Who-niverse Effected American TV”

News: Cal Poly Pomona: IGE Professors co-edit Women in American History: An Encyclopedia

From IGE News at Cal Poly Pomona…

IGE Professors co-edit Women in American History: An Encyclopedia

Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Peg Lamphier, two adjunct professors in the Interdisciplinary General Education Department (IGE), have been contracted to co-edit Women in American History: An Encyclopedia for ABC-CLIO. Rather than being primarily a biographical encyclopedia, the 4-volume set will focus on women who have made social, political and cultural contributions to the United States from pre-contact to the present day. Women in American History: An Encyclopedia is scheduled to publish as ABC-CLIO’s biggest catalog title of the 2016 season.

Welch had previously written The Encyclopedia of Women in Aviation and Space for the publisher in 1998.

Lamphier’s previous books include Kate Chase and William Sprague: Politics and Gender in a Civil War Marriage (2003) and Spur Up Your Pegasus: Family Letters of Salmon, Kate and Nettie Chase (2009). She is under contract with Blackwell-Wiley to co-author for a Civil War and Reconstruction textbook.

Video: “How the Growing Popularity of the English Who-niverse (including Torchwood) Effected American Television: A Catalog of Changes in Cross-Continent Collaboration, Diversity in Casting and Methods of Distribution”

“How the Growing Popularity of the English Who-niverse (including Torchwood) Effected American Television: A Catalog of Changes in Cross-Continent Collaboration, Diversity in Casting and Methods of Distribution”

At the 2013 Screenwriting Research Network Annual International Conference at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Dr. Rosanne Welch presented this paper examining the cross-continent collaboration of Russell T. Davies and the largely American staff of the 4th season of Torchwood, known as Torchwood: Miracle Days well as the ways the international popularity of Doctor Who and Torchwood address questions of diversity in media and cross-cultural audience reception, production and distribution. The paper makes the point that words make a difference/words cross cultures. It tracks the changes created in American television in terms of production partnerships (as when Torchwood’s 4th season was co-produced by the BBC in America with Starz), programming (as when the annual Christmas Day showing of Who was rescheduled in America to avoid internet spoilers), and cross-continental casting production partnerships (as when Torchwood’s 4th season was co-produced by the BBC in America with Starz) and programming (as when the annual Christmas Day showing of Who was rescheduled in America to avoid internet spoilers) and cross-continental casting” caused by the arrival of the new Who (circa 2005) and its unprecedented success in the United States.

More info on Doctor Who and Race book – Now available in the UK

Life, Doctor Who, and ComBom recently posted a story on Doctor Who and Race, a new book essays in which Rosanne’s writing appears. Here is their take on the book an the controversy that has sprung up around it.

“Intellect Books have just released Doctor Who and Race, an anthology of essays about, well, the depiction of race in Doctor Who. Blurb: “Doctor Who is the longest running science fiction television series in the world and is regularly watched by millions of people across the globe. While its scores of fans adore the show with cult-like devotion, the fan-contributors to this book argue that there is an uncharted dimension to Doctor Who. Bringing together diverse perspectives on race and its representation in Doctor Who, this anthology offers new understandings of the cultural significance of race in the programme – how the show’s representations of racial diversity, colonialism, nationalism and racism affect our daily lives and change the way we relate to each other. An accessible introduction to critical race theory, postcolonial studies and other race-related academic fields, the 23 contributors deftly combine examples of the popular cultural icon and personal reflections to provide an analysis that is at once approachable but also filled with the intellectual rigor of academic critique.” Copies are available for £19.95.

Editor Lindy Orthia has created a blog to talk about the book: it currently features short biographies of the contributors, useful links, and a few articles, including a comment on the pre-publication controversies (the Radio Times piece on the book offering the most neutral explanation on what issues concerned the authors and what the BBC had to say in response. Racialicious strongly defended the book and the Daily Mail strongly defended the BBC, rather uncharacteristically of the tabloid, so that about runs the gamut of reactions.)”

Read the entire article