I truly liked my class with Shorter and recommend him, but some people didn't jive with him. He's the classic archetype of a university professor but funnier and looser. Just participate in the discussions, do the readings, and attend office hours, and you will be on his good side and do fine. Also, he will make you a better writer.

The readings/texts/films were exciting and changed my perspective on many areas of life.

I really enjoyed this class, and it was a really great way to develop my arts critique and analysis skills while also learning about a wide range of extremely relevant social justice issues and movements around the globe. When I took this class, it was structured as a documentary film analysis class, which I think was a great introduction to the WAC department. Overall, I think David's teaching style worked well for this class--the only thing was that there is a good amount of writing assignments, and his standards (which he calls "the college rule") are very rigorous.

This class was an insane introduction to the WAC major... the theater setting made it hard to get to know people and the workload was a lot, esp for incoming freshman. But the actual content we covered really touched me, and def expanded my critical lens. We watched multiple films per week, some in class and some on our own, that covered a range of different social issues.

Short papers on a specific number of films (our choice on which) out of the total watched were due the week each film was assigned. The papers needed to discuss a specific technique the director utilized and what goals they achieved-- "the film cut back and forth from this scene to this scene which highlighted this," "the selective use of color made apparent this theme," etc. There was also a final paper with a broader prompt.