Conference – Page 26 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Dr. Rosanne Welch (https://rosannewelch.com) speaks on “Feminism in the Whoniverse” of Doctor Who, the BBC television program now in its 50th year. She reviews each of the Doctor’s female companions and speaks on how they are represented in the program and how they represented the women of their respective periods.

Transcript:

The Aztec episode, exactly. I love the cover with Barbara in the lovely Aztec headdress. And here, she had to learn a lesson from The Doctor about the fact that she had to allow human sacrifice to continue because that was the culture in which he had travelled and it wasn’t his business to decide that their religious practices were wrong. Because that’s not his business. It’s their business to decide how they feel about it. so, that’s a good example of what she brought to him and to the debates on the show.

Feminism in the Whoniverse was presented at the Cal Poly Pomona University Library where Dr. Welch teaches in the IGE (Interdisciplinary General Education) program.

This is the 4th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who that Dr. Welch has presented. You can find these talks using the links below.

Subscribe to Dr. Welch’s YouTube Channel

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Video: Barbara Wright from Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

A clip from this longer presentation – Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Watch this entire presentation – Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Transcript:

Now the other, early, first partner with the Doctor is Barbara. This is a backstage scene and she is also here with the actress playing Susan. Barbara was a history teacher. Isn’t that perfect? It’s a show about… (inaudible) They’re the coolest people I know.Heavens to Betsys. Just like Clara. So, we’re seeing exactly, there’s a circle we’re going to watch happen here which is very interesting. So, Barbara — and that was the idea, that you’d need a history teacher to interpret the things that The Doctor was seeing, for the audience, but that also meant that a mature woman was traveling with him. She is a little bit of a mother figure for Susan. So she can have conversations about things with her and likewise, Barbara has the intellect to challenge The Doctor. “You can’t behave like that! I won’t allow it. I have some power here. I know where this culture is going in history and you cannot doa thing that will mess them up.” So, she’s a very interesting balance for the Doctor. In the very beginning, we have some very — I would say — feminist females hanging out with The Doctor.

Feminism in the Whoniverse was presented at the Cal Poly Pomona University Library where Dr. Welch teaches in the IGE (Interdisciplinary General Education) program.

This is the 4th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who that Dr. Welch has presented. You can find these talks using the links below.

Subscribe to Dr. Welch’s YouTube Channel

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Video: Why Monkees Matter: How The Writing Staff of The Monkees Brought the 1960s Counter Culture to Mainstream Pre-Teen Viewers

Why Monkees Matter: How The Writing Staff of The Monkees Brought the 1960s Counter Culture to Mainstream Pre-Teen Viewers

Dr. Rosanne Welch presents Why Monkees Matter: How The Writing Staff of The Monkees Brought the 1960s Counter Culture to Mainstream Pre-Teen Viewers at the 2014 Cal Poly Pomona Provost’s Symposium on Faculty Scholarship (http://www.cpp.edu/~research/)

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Description:

Based on a chapter in my upcoming book The Metatextual Menagerie that was The Monkees, which includes aseries of interviews conducted with surviving writers and performers of the 1960s television program, The Monkees I willdiscuss how the writers and actors used the show as a platform for their own emerging counter culture/anti-war messages.

Worth studying for its craft and place in television history (the show won an Emmy as Best Comedy Of 1967) the program’strue importance may come from its impact on the politics and culture of the era. Considered innocuous by the network, thepress and the parents of the era, the storylines and jokes created by the writers and the actor’s ad-libs brought theemerging counter-culture to the attention of young teens whose parents might not have appreciated the message. Culturalicons such as Timothy Leary recognized the subversive nature of the program, seen through the writing and in choicesmade about costuming, hair length, musical guests (Frank Zappa, Tim Buckley, Charlie Smalls) and songs performed by theband brought issues of Vietnam, voting and civil rights to the ‘young generation’ for whom the show clearly had ‘somethin’to say.

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About the Symposium:

The 2014 Provost’s Symposium is a forum to learn about each other’s scholarly work, make new friends, renew old acquaintances, and enhance our appreciation of the rich and diverse array of professional endeavors pursued by the faculty at Cal Poly Pomona.

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”

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.

Rosanne presents paper at SW/TX Popular Culture and American Culture Associations conference

This week Rosanne is presenting a paper — “The Changing Face of the Doctor’s Voice: A Tale of Two Writers” — on the writing of the BBC program DOCTOR WHO at the joint SW/TX Popular Culture and American Culture Associations conference in San Antonio.

Rosanne Welch spent 2010 finishing her dissertation “Married, With Screenplay: A Study of 3 Married Screenwriting Teams and the Films They Wrote” in order to receive her Ph.D from Claremont GraduateUniversity in summer 2011. She also wrote “Class of ’80: How (and why) the Writers of 1980 are Creating the Culture of 2010” for November issue of Written By Magazine, the magazine of the Writers Guild of America West.

Category: Conference

Video: Barbara and The Doctor from Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Video: Barbara Wright from Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Video: Why Monkees Matter: How The Writing Staff of The Monkees Brought the 1960s Counter Culture to Mainstream Pre-Teen Viewers

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

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”

Rosanne presents paper at SW/TX Popular Culture and American Culture Associations conference