Sunday Scholar Series
May 2, 2010
Following the performance (approximately 4:30 pm)

• A free one-hour, post-show panel discussion with experts on the themes and issues of the play

You do not need to attend the performance that day to participate in this discussion. Just arrive and enter the theater after the performance ends.

The Sunday Scholars panel will be moderated by TimeLine Board member Peter Kuntz, executive director of the Arts & Business Council of Chicago.

The discussion will feature:

Max Dawson
Max Dawson is an assistant professor in the department of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University. Previously he was an assistant professor in the department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University. A graduate of Northwestern's Screen Cultures PhD. program, Dawson teaches courses on television, new media, digital culture, and video games. His research examines television's fraught relationship to new media technologies, exploring the ways in which innovations ranging from the remote control to the mobile phone have unsettled longstanding notions of television's uses and cultural meanings. He has published articles in the journals Technology and Culture, Convergence, and the Journal of Popular Film and Television, and has contributed chapters to the edited volumes American Thought and Culture in the Twenty-First Century (Columbia University Press, 2008) and Television as Digital Media (Duke University Press, 2010). His current projects include an article on the digital television transition of 2009; co-editing a special issue of the online journal Wi on mobile television; and a manuscript entitled TV Repair which traces the history of television's encounters with new media technologies.

Walter J. Podrazik
Walter J. Podrazik loves making media work. As a project planner and consultant, Wally has experienced firsthand history-in-the-making handling media logistics at such high profile events as the Democratic Party’s quadrennial presidential nominating conventions. As a communication analyst and writer, Wally has provided insights online, in print, on radio and television, at conferences, and in a variety of education forums. A graduate of the School of Communication at Northwestern University, Wally has taught writing, communication, and media history, and is a visiting lecturer at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Wally has collaborated on seven other books with Harry Castleman. Separately, he has also provided historical narrative and analysis on pioneer interactive projects such as The Great Debate, a joint production of UIC and Chicago’s Museum of Broadcast Communications, where Wally is a consulting curator. He also serves as creative resources director for Heartland Historical Research Service, specializing in researching and packaging local and personal history. Wally is happily married and enjoys watching television at his family homestead (built in 1872), occasionally imagining a pre-TV world there without Lost, Columbo, Fawlty Towers, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.