There’s a “Doctor Who” class at UC Berkeley…
So UC Berkeley offers “decals”, which are student-taught classes. The classes (they’re legitimate classes too! You get real credits, you have to do homework, there’s a final project, etc.) are AMAZING, and have to do with topics that students want to learn about, including but not limited to:
- Batman as American Mythology
- Disney & Our Daily Lives
- Cliches and Transgressions of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS)
- Vital Information For Your Everyday Life: Children’s Television of the 90’s
- Thirst: Water and International Human Rights
- UNICEF: Awareness of Children in the Developing World
I personally took Harry Potter and the Chamber of Analysis and Speedcubing: The Art of Solving a Rubik’s Cube (which is the advanced class – My record is 34 seconds). Either way, they have some REALLY INTERESTING classes, whether to do with culture or politics or skill-learning (there’s an archery class and a guitar class, etc.).
AND IT JUST SO HAPPENS, IN THE YEAR AFTER I GRADUATE, THEY START OFFERING DOCTOR WHO CLASSES.
REALLY, BERKELEY? REALLY? YOU COULDN’T HAVE OFFERED THAT WHILE I WAS STILL A STUDENT?
Makes me feel better about last year’s three-term sequence, “Being Inhuman: Vampires, Zombies, Cyborgs and Other Liminal People.” There was a year-long Shakespeare, too, but, you know, meh.
At Syracuse University, Anthony Rotolo teaches a class called ‘Star Trek and the Information Age.’ Each week, students live-tweet a rewatch of an episode from one of the Trek series (on a full-sized movie screen in one of the auditoriums, for extra awesome), and then spend the rest of the class discussing relevant issues from the episode.
It’s more than slightly amazing. Also it turns out to be a remarkable recruiting tool for the information technology programs. Now I’m wondering if I could get him hooked on Who…