Throw on your backpacks, gladiators.
This fall, American University (AU) in Washington, DC is offering "The Shonda Rhimes Experience," a course that will use Rhimes' shows like Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder, and Grey's Anatomy to explore gender, sexuality, and even social media marketing.
It's nothing like Criminal Law 100 and you won't be able to breeze through the class with a jug of red wine and a bowl of popcorn à la Olivia Pope– the course has over sixty required readings and assignments that force students to think outside the box. The course's final paper asks students to use Grey's Anatomy, Scandal or How to Get Away with Murder, to examine how the series addresses issues of race, sexuality, and/or identity.
AU instructor Stef Woods is a long-time Shondaland fan, and believes Rhimes has a strong influence on American pop culture. This isn't her first course that brings pop culture into the classroom, or her first class involving Rhimes' shows. She's taught a "Politics, TV, and Ethics" class that analyzed the political ethics in The West Wing, House of Cards, and Scandal, a course on the class, politics, and marketing behind The Hunger Games, and a course on feminism, sexuality and marketing in Fifty Shades of Grey. She decided to create a Shondaland-centric curriculum so she could "talk about much more than just politics."
One of the outcomes of the course is to "investigate the use of traditional and digital media by viewers, casts, and networks, as community-building and marketing tools." Scandal was the first show to use a promoted hashtag to advertise an episode (#WhoShotFitz). The cast and crew behind Shondaland programs interact with viewers on social media during every episode, and create content to engage fans even when the shows aren't on. One assignment for the class requires students to set up a Twitter account, choose a show with an active Twitter presence, then tune in and live Tweet for the entirety of the show. This ungraded assignment will help students develop a marketing plan and analyze advertising demographics for a show idea of their own creation.
Woods hopes that students come away from the class with work that they'll feel proud of, a critical eye for representation in media, a thorough understanding of Twitter marketing, and the realization that "learning and fun aren't mutually exclusive."
Her class meets Thursday evenings right before Shondaland programming begins – bringing a whole new meaning to #TGIT.
Share This Article
