[log in to unmask] said: > at the same time we can hardly expect a scholar working on, say, the > syntax of the films by john ford to always be looking out for how this > scholarship might be useful . . . that's not what scholars do Agreed. But my further question is, "should the scholars be teaching arcane lines of research to undergraduates" Having read Weddle's article and the various reactions to it, I think there is another dimension of this case that deserves exploration: the context for a dopey exam question. Having taught film and film theory to undergraduates (not graduate students) for over 20 years, I read that exam question with consternation and distress. It reads like a question that MIGHT show up on a Ph.D. oral exam....or it is probably more appropriate as the topic for a paper at a specialized conference. (I have this uneasy suspicion that the instructor who gave that exam was trolling for insights for an upcoming conference presentation.) In recent years, I have grown progressively disturbed by the way that undergraduate education has become preoccupied with the narrow and idiosyncratic specializations of graduate education --> or with the narrow topics that are the research programs of the instructors. I continue to hold that students who are studying the film production can benefit profit from learning about film theory -- in fact, I have had students say that they finally understood how to analyze a film after a film theory course. Likewise film studies students MUST know something about film production. But there are levels of theory appropriate for undergraduates, and that exam question looks inappropriate to me. There are extenuating circumstances that might lead me to revise that opinion -- like the level of the course or the assignments leading up to that one -- but, assuming that the Weddle daughter's testimony about pervasive class confusion was remotely accurate, the exam question needs more than glancing justification. D.Langston North Adams, MA ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.ScreenSite.org