Speaking – Page 62 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

25 Rose and Martha Jones from Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse [Video] (0:57)

Watch this entire presentation: Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse: Paving the Way for a Lady Doctor with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (36:58)

For her 5th Doctor Who lecture to the CPP community, Dr. Rosanne Welch discusses how society – and the show’s writing staff – prepared the audience for a major change in this 50-year franchise – the creation of the first Lady Doctor!

Transcript:

Then we have Rose who came into the new Doctor Who with Christopher Eccleston and stayed threw David and Rose is a interesting character because she looks like she’s not that smart — she’s a shop girl, she really can’t keep a job etc — but she always steps up to the plate when necessary. She’s always able to take care of The Doctor when he can’t and that’s a pretty powerful job if you want. And then we come to Martha — who some people think The Doctor didn’t treat very nicely because she was the girl after the girl he loved because he fell in love with Rose and then the new girlfriend shows up. But she’s not meant to be a girlfriend. Right? She’s meant to be a companion. Except that then she fell for him, which is always a bad thing. Don’t fall for a guy after the last relationship, but I think you can find that that shows us strength too. First of all, one of the best storylines was for a whole year she walked the Earth to tell people about The Doctor in order to save his life. It is a pretty cool episode, right? So that’s one thing, She essentially saves his life. That’s a strength.

Follow Dr. Welch on Twitter and Instagram
https://twitter.com/rosannewelch – http://instagram.com/drrosannewelch

Rosanne Welch, PhD

Rosanne Welch PhD teaches the History of Screenwriting and One-Hour Drama for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting.

Writing/producing credits include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. In 2016 she published the book Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop; co-edited Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia; and placed “Transmitting Culture Transnationally Via the Characterization of Parents in Police Procedurals” in the New Review of Film and Television Studies. Essays appear in Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television and Doctor Who and Race: An Anthology. Welch serves as Book Reviews editor for Journal of Screenwriting and on the Editorial Advisory Board for Written By magazine, the magazine of the Writers Guild.

Watch Dr. Welch’s talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” at the 2016 TEDxCPP.

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“When Women Wrote Hollywood” Book Launch Event [Video] (31:40)

When Women Wrote Hollywood Book Launch Event
August 11,2 018 at the Jim Henson Studios, where the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting program resides.

These 23 essays cover a range of female screenwriters from the early years of film through the 1940s, women whose work helped create the unforgettable stories and characters beloved generations of audiences but whose names have been left out of most film histories. Not this one. This collection is dedicated to those women and written by a group of women grateful to stand on the shoulders of those who came before – as a beacon to those who will come after.

Many thanks to the essay contributors who joined us and spoke so eloquently about the women writers they had researched: Toni Anita Hull, Laura Kirk, Amelia Phillips, Sarah Phillips, Julie Berkobien, Khanisha Foster, Lauren Smith, and to Cari Beauchamp, who wrote the Forward to the collection.

Buy a signed copy of when Women Write Hollywood

Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition

* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

13 More Than Just a Rom-Com from How The Monkees Changed Television [Video] (0:40)

What this entire presentation — How The Monkees Changed Television with Rosanne Welch, PhD (Complete Presentation and Q&A) [Video] (45:06)

Rosanne Welch, PhD, Author of Why The Monkees Matter, presents “How The Monkees Changed Television” at a Cal State Fullerton Lunch Lecture on May 8, 2018.

In this talk, she shows how The Monkees, and specifically their presence on television, set the stage for large changes to come in the late 1960s.

Transcript

When I think about feminism, gender, and sexuality — again, I watched all the episodes again — and the impression, when I was a kid, was every episode was about Davy falling in love with someone. Turned out that wasn’t true. Turns out the other boys fell in love too, but even more so there were lots of different genres. If you think about TV. Sometimes they did a horror episode. Sometimes they did an entire music video for the whole half an hour — running through the streets of Paris. Sometimes they did a rom-com which was Davy or someone falling in love. Sometimes they did an old West show. So they introduced students and children to lots of different kinds of genres which I think was pretty fun too.

Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition

Want to use “Why The Monkees Matter” in your classroom?

Order Examination Copies, Library and Campus Bookstore orders directly from McFarland

About Rosanne Welch, PhD

Rosanne Welch, PhD is a writer, producer and university professor with credits that include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, Touched by an Angel and ABC NEWS/Nightline. Other books include Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture (McFarland, 2017) and Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection (ABC-CLIO, 2017), named to the 2018 Outstanding References Sources List, by the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association. Welch has also published chapters in Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television (I.B.Tauris) and The American Civil War on Film and TV: Blue and Gray in Black and White and Color (Lexington Books, 2018) and essays in Doctor Who and Race: An Anthology and Outside In Makes it So, and Outside in Boldly Goes (both edited by Robert Smith). By day she teaches courses on the history of screenwriting and on television writing for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting programs. Her talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” at the 2016 TEDxCPP is available on YouTube.

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Books for Sale! – When Women Wrote Hollywood Book Launch Event via Instagram

Books for Sale! – When Women Wrote Hollywood Book Launch Event

Follow Rosanne Welch on Instagram

Buy a signed copy of when Women Write Hollywood

* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

When Women Wrote Hollywood Book Launch Event – August 11, 2018 [Photos]

See the entire collection of photos

In honor of the launch of our book of essays – When Women Wrote Hollywood – Jake Flynn, Communications Director for Councilmember Bob Blumenfield presented us this Certificate of Recognition from the Los Angeles City Council for “bringing students from throughout the country to Los Angeles and pairing them with mentors in the heart of the entertainment business…

The flexibility of the program allows for a diverse student body which in turn promotes the telling of stories that have not been heard before.” One certificate will return home to Stephens College with Dean Gail Humphries Mardirosian, who flew out to attend the launch, and the other two will stay with Ken and I here in Los Angeles.

Buy a signed copy of when Women Write Hollywood

* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

24 Nyssa from Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse [Video] (0:42)

Watch this entire presentation: Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse: Paving the Way for a Lady Doctor with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (36:58)

Transcript:

Then we had Nyssa who I really enjoyed. Nyssa came in with the Peter Davison era with Teegan — who’s alright. Teegan has her moments. But Nyssa is an alien, super intelligent from her alien race and at the end of her time with The Doctor — thy end up on a planet where there’s a leper colony and nobody is taking care of these people and rather than — again — continuing to travel with The Doctor she chooses to stay and be a caregiver to these people. She’s a doctor so she can take care of them and imagines that she will find a cure for this if she stays behind and he’s like “well maybe this will never be cured” and she’s like “it won’t ever be cured if no one tries.” So she’s willing to give it that time which I think is a beautiful strength being evidenced by a female character. Not that hard.

Follow Dr. Welch on Twitter and Instagram
https://twitter.com/rosannewelch – http://instagram.com/drrosannewelch

Rosanne Welch, PhD

Rosanne Welch PhD teaches the History of Screenwriting and One-Hour Drama for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting.

Watch Dr. Welch’s talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” at the 2016 TEDxCPP.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Rosanne Moderates the Women Comedy Writers Panel for the Writers Guild Foundation and Stephens College

Pictured: Gail Parent, Njeri Brown, Rosanne Welch, Natasha Leggero, Riki Lindhome, Christine Zander and Ken Lazebnik pose before the Women Comedy Writers Panel

I had a great time moderating another panel for the WGA Foundation and enjoyed meeting all these female comedy writers. We talked about the power of comedy to force us to face the issues of our day and the pure fun of finding your place in a writers room.

I took the opportunity to ask Gail Parent (of The Carol Burnett Show, and The Golden Girls) to sign my used copy of her novel Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York so now I have another book to add to my autographed shelf!

It was wonderful to feel the reverence in the room whenever she spoke – coming from the audience as well as the panel. That kind of reverence for those who came before us is usually reserved for men, which made experiencing it so much more powerful.

See all the pictures in this set on the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting and Television Facebook Page

12 Acceptance, Critics and The Monkees from How The Monkees Changed Television [Video] (0:48)

What this entire presentation — How The Monkees Changed Television with Rosanne Welch, PhD (Complete Presentation and Q&A) [Video] (45:06)

Rosanne Welch, PhD, Author of Why The Monkees Matter, presents “How The Monkees Changed Television” at a Cal State Fullerton Lunch Lecture on May 8, 2018.

In this talk, she shows how The Monkees, and specifically their presence on television, set the stage for large changes to come in the late 1960s.

Transcript

Peter Tork, who’s pretty brilliant, said they probably got a larger audience for this anti-war point of view than even The Beatles did because TV was free and young kids couldn’t always afford to buy an album and The Beatles weren’t on TV every week, The Monkees were, so their message got through to those kids on a more regular basis.

Who can guess who’s Peter Tork sitting with at the Monterey Pop Festival? Janis Joplin! There’s a whole lot of talk about how nobody took them seriously. People in the music business took them seriously because they were selling millions of records. They hung out together. They played music and jammed at each other’s houses over the weekend. They were all friends. It was the critics who didn’t take their music seriously and as I was discussing before we started their music has legs and is still around so the critics were wrong for once.

Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition

Want to use “Why The Monkees Matter” in your classroom?

Order Examination Copies, Library and Campus Bookstore orders directly from McFarland

About Rosanne Welch, PhD

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

23 Sarah Jane Smith from Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse [Video] (0:54)

Watch this entire presentation: Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse: Paving the Way for a Lady Doctor with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (36:58)

Transcript:

Sarah Jane is one of my favorite companions. She’s come from the old Who to new Who and then she even had her own program The Sarah Jane Adventures. So what happened was she came into the Third Doctor’s life. She was an investigative reporter so she wasn’t some girl who did nothing and she wasn’t just reporting on fashion and/or celebrities. She was an investigative reporter. She looked for things that were wrong in her society and she highlighted that with being her newspaper writer. So that’s how she came to meet The Doctor. She traveled with him through Tom Baker obviously. Then she left and returned in an episode called School Reunion with David Tennant. So in the new Who era and at that time, of course, time had passed and she was invited to continue traveling and she had the strength and the intelligence to say No. I need to move on with my life. I’ve been thinking of you for too long. I need to have my own life.

Follow Dr. Welch on Twitter and Instagram
https://twitter.com/rosannewelch – http://instagram.com/drrosannewelch

Rosanne Welch, PhD

Rosanne Welch PhD teaches the History of Screenwriting and One-Hour Drama for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting.

Watch Dr. Welch’s talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” at the 2016 TEDxCPP.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

11 The War and The Monkees from How The Monkees Changed Television [Video] (0:53)

What this entire presentation — How The Monkees Changed Television with Rosanne Welch, PhD (Complete Presentation and Q&A) [Video] (45:06)

Rosanne Welch, PhD, Author of Why The Monkees Matter, presents “How The Monkees Changed Television” at a Cal State Fullerton Lunch Lecture on May 8, 2018.

In this talk, she shows how The Monkees, and specifically their presence on television, set the stage for large changes to come in the late 1960s.

Transcript

This is a great shot. I love from the Associated Press. All four of the men — three of the men — were drafted while they were on the show because they were all like 18, 19 and 20 years old. Michael Nesmith had already been in the Air Force so he was not but the other 3 guys were and they had to find a way around it. Even Davy Jones who was from England was drafted because he was living and making money in the United States. Thee girls took to the streets and said “If Davy goes, we go too!” The protests against losing them were very huge, but in general they were talking about how this is a bad war.. So if you look at this line I love from one of the episodes…

“They want to put the blame on teenagers. Take the war. Whose fault is it? We’re not fighting. it must be those crazy kids. They’re the ones doing all the fighting.”

Again, if that’s not an anti-war message wrapped up in a funny show. I have not idea how they got away with that, but they did.