This course is designed to help students transition from high school students to university students. While researching True Blood, Sheri Anderson realized just how much the values and lessons hidden within the vampire TV series could help students with one of the biggest upheavals in their young lives:
Many of them are living away from home for the first time, they are trying to figure out who they are as individuals and they are trying to adjust to new social surroundings and everything that transition includes … The reasons I thought this was appropriate for college students is that right now they are at a major turning point in their lives, where they are the new people and they are the ones trying to fit it. So seeing vampires trying to fit into society is funny, it’s dark and it’s interesting, but’s it’s also very human … ‘True Blood’ was able to tackle the very grown up issues dealing with fitting in to the main stream and stepping ‘out of the coffin. Depending through which lens you are viewing it, that could be a civil rights metaphor, it could be a gay rights metaphor or it could just be someone who is on the outside just trying to fit in.
During the this freshman seminar course, students are able to view three episodes of HBO’s True Blood and then are instructed to find journal articles and secondary source materials that relate to what they have learnt.
Surprisingly, this is not the first time Professor Anderson has taught True Blood related courses at Monmouth.
Let us know your thoughts on studying True Blood at university by commenting below!
Source: NJ.com – Vampires 101: Monmouth University professor makes ‘True Blood’ part of curriculum
(Photo Credit: HBO Inc.)
