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!

Audio: Rosanne Welch and Dawn Comer Jefferson interviewed on the Go Write Something! Podcast

Dawn and Rosanne were recently interviewed by Candice L. Davis of the Go Write Something podcast. You can listen to the entire interview here or directly from the GoWriteSomething.com web site.

Listen to this podcast – GWS 001: How Writing for TV Prepared These Writers for Indie Publishing

GWS 001: How Writing for TV Prepared These Writers for Indie Publishing

Woo hoo! The premiere episode of the Go Write Something podcast! I can’t wait to get some more interviewing experience under my belt, so I can look back and laugh at how dorky I sound in the early episodes.

Dawn Comer Jefferson and Rosanne Welch are writing partners who’ve done most of their work in television. (Their full bios are below.) In this episode I interview them about their first novel, based on historical events, The Promise.

We talk about:

  • how to collaborate with another writer
  • how writing for television influenced their novel writing journey
  • how to create your own writing lifestyle
  • and more

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.

Rosanne and Martin at Investigating Torchwood Conference - 3 

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: On Books: Doctor Who and Race with Dr. Rosanne Welch

I was recently interviewed for my husband’s podcast about the book and wanted to share it here. — Rosanne

Part of the Dog Days of Podcasting Challenge

I interview my wife, Dr. Rosanne Welch on her recently published essay, “When White Boys Write Black: Race and Class in the Davies and Moffat Eras” in the collection, Doctor Who and Race published by Intellect.

 

Read Rosanne’s interview with Doctor Who Producer and Writer, Russell T Davies for Written By Magazine.

Audio: My Word On Books: Doctor Who and Race with Dr. Rosanne Welch

I was recently interviewed for my husband’s podcast about the book and wanted to share it here. — Rosanne

From My Word with Douglas E. Welch…

 I interview my wife, Dr. Rosanne Welch on her recently published essay, “When White Boys Write Black: Race and Class in the Davies and Moffat Eras” in the collection, Doctor Who and Race published by Intellect.

Listen to this interview

Read Rosanne’s interview with Doctor Who Producer and Writer, Russell T Davies for Written By Magazine.

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

“The Promise” – a new children’s book from Rosanne Welch and Dawn Comer Jefferson

Promise cover final

Buy now from Amazon.com*

Based on a true story, The Promise follows Mary, the 9 year old daughter of slave family in Louisiana in the 1850s. Because Mary and her father can read and write, Mary’s family is promised freedom if they travel with their master on the treacherous Oregon Trail. When they reach Oregon, the master frees the parents but keeps Mary and her brother as slaves. Mary’s parents take the master to court to sue for custody of their children, and with Mary’s brave testimony, they set in motion a law which helps determine if Oregon will come into the Union as a free state or a slave state. The Promise is a historical chapter book for children ages 7-9.

About the authors

Dawn Comer Jefferson

Dawn Comer Jefferson is a television writer whose credits include Judging Amy, South of Nowhere, The Bold & the Beautiful and the Los Angeles Holiday Celebration. Dawn was nominated for an Emmy Award for Our Friend, Martin, an animated family film about the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. With Rosanne Welch, Dawn co-edited the nonfiction book, Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work, and Family (Seal Press).

Rosanne Welch, PhD

Rosanne Welch, PhD has written for television (Touched by an Angel, Picket Fences) and print (Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work and Kids and The Encyclopedia of Women in Aviation and Space). In the documentary world she has written and produced Bill Clinton and the Boys Nation Class of 1963 for ABC NEWS/Nightline and consulted on PBS’s A Prince Among Slaves, the story of a prince from West Africa who was enslaved in the 1780s, freed by order of President John Quincy Adams in the 1820s and returned to his homeland.

* You don’t need a Kindle device to read Kindle books. With Amazon’s Kindle Cloud Reader — a web browser-based Kindle Reader — you don’t even need to download any extra software. That said, the Kindle reader apps for Windows, Macintosh, iPhone, iPad and Android devices improves the reading experience.

Rosanne’s writing appears in book, Doctor Who and Race

Rosanne’s essay is entitled “When white boys write black: Race and class in the Davies and Moffat eras”.

Available August 15, 2013 – Pre-Order Your Copy Today via Amazon.com

Dw race cover front Dw race cover back

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.

Lindy Orthia is a lecturer at the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, the Australian National University. She has examined intersections between science, ideology and Doctor Who in several publications.

All proceeds for royalties for Dr Who and Race will be donated to Médecins Sans Frontières and AVERT.

Writers:

Emily Asher-Perrin
Alec Charles
Vanessa De Kauwe
Linnea Dodson
Fire Fly
Erica Foss
Stephanie Guerdan
Amit Gupta
Marcus K. Harmes
Mike Hernandez
Quiana Howard
George Ivanoff
Kristine Larsen
Leslie Mcmurtry
Catriona Mills
Rachel Morgain
Kate Orman
Lindy Orthia
Richard Scully
Robert Smith
John Vohlidka
Rosanne Welch
Iona Yeager

Rosanne’s Top 5 Books for Film Buffs

Here are my Top 5 picks for the best books for film buffs.

Dunne, John Gregory. Monster: Living Off the Big Screen. New York: Random House, 1997.

Even though it’s about a film made in 1996 that even die hard Robert Redford fans have not likely seen (Up Close and Personal), this book about writing a blockbuster film by John Gregory Dunne discusses Hollywood honestly – especially as it deals with married screenwriters like he and his wife Joan Didion.

Harmetz, Aljean . The Making of Casablanca: Bogart, Bergman, and World War II. Hyperion, 2002.

You don’t need to love the film to like this book about how a classic came together. I like the way Harmetz gives backgrounds on all the supporting characters and we learn how many were refugees from Nazi regimes.

McGillligan, Patrick. Backstory: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

McGillligan has 4 more books in this series – each one containing long, interesting interviews with screenwriters from a particular era from the 1920s to the 1990s. And as we all know, writers are highly entertaining conversationalists!

Messenger, Chris. The Godfather and American Culture: How the Corleones Became “Our Gang.” Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.

What’s to say except this is a great book if you love The Godfather – but even if you don’t it is a good reminder of how certain movies become entrenched in our national culture – and can do things like make us more comfortable with minorities so that they soon become majorities.

Norman, Marc. What Happens Next: A History of American Screenwriting. New York: Harmony Books, 2007.

This is the history of how screenwriters got screwed out of being considered the legal ‘authors’ of the works they write!