As far as course descriptions go, there are two things at play: there's the catalog description, which individual professors don't have control over; and course descriptions for advertising purposes, which can vary from institution to institution.
Each institution has a catalog for each year that lists all the courses with their descriptions and co- + pre-requisites, degrees, and policies. This catalog is updated each year, and students graduate under the catalog of the year of their admission (although students can change their catalog year if it's advantegous to them for graduation). Items in the catalog are rigidly and strictly monitored by a variety of bodies--the accrediting body like SACS, the state system (for us it's the USG and the Board of Regents), and the institution itself. Any change to information in the catalog has to go through committee. Catalog descriptions of courses have to appear on syllabi, and professors are obligated to teach courses according to catalog descriptions. For example, a professional writing course I frequently teach has in the catalog description that students will do a group project, so the class has to have a group project. Of course, we all know some people are shit and don't do what they're supposed to. LOL
The other kind of description to advertise the class might go up on a flyer or out by email and is intended to drum up enrollment in a course. Those are typically made by the teachers themselves but could be made by anybody: a student worker, an admin, the chair.
I have mixed feelings about teaching fanfic. I think fan studies can be taught, and it would be a fascinating grad class. I think trying to teach fanfic itself, especially to undergrads is very fraught. Just on a practical level, fanfic works when people have familiarity with the source material. So you have to be able to assign the source material as well. So no TV shows. I don't think showing an episode of a show in isolation works to truly understand a TV show. You could have students read one or two books and then only read fic about those books or watch one or two movies and then only read fic about those movies, but you start to run into time issues with figuring out source material.
There's Coppa's Fanfiction Reader, but most of the fanfic in there is about those big fandoms like X-Files and Star Trek, and IDK how well reading that kind of fanfic works when you haven't watched a whole bunch of it.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2021-09-28 10:10 am (UTC)Each institution has a catalog for each year that lists all the courses with their descriptions and co- + pre-requisites, degrees, and policies. This catalog is updated each year, and students graduate under the catalog of the year of their admission (although students can change their catalog year if it's advantegous to them for graduation). Items in the catalog are rigidly and strictly monitored by a variety of bodies--the accrediting body like SACS, the state system (for us it's the USG and the Board of Regents), and the institution itself. Any change to information in the catalog has to go through committee. Catalog descriptions of courses have to appear on syllabi, and professors are obligated to teach courses according to catalog descriptions. For example, a professional writing course I frequently teach has in the catalog description that students will do a group project, so the class has to have a group project. Of course, we all know some people are shit and don't do what they're supposed to. LOL
The other kind of description to advertise the class might go up on a flyer or out by email and is intended to drum up enrollment in a course. Those are typically made by the teachers themselves but could be made by anybody: a student worker, an admin, the chair.
I have mixed feelings about teaching fanfic. I think fan studies can be taught, and it would be a fascinating grad class. I think trying to teach fanfic itself, especially to undergrads is very fraught. Just on a practical level, fanfic works when people have familiarity with the source material. So you have to be able to assign the source material as well. So no TV shows. I don't think showing an episode of a show in isolation works to truly understand a TV show. You could have students read one or two books and then only read fic about those books or watch one or two movies and then only read fic about those movies, but you start to run into time issues with figuring out source material.
There's Coppa's Fanfiction Reader, but most of the fanfic in there is about those big fandoms like X-Files and Star Trek, and IDK how well reading that kind of fanfic works when you haven't watched a whole bunch of it.