Special Topics in Media

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, host Garret Castleberry is joined by special guest Dr. Tim Craig, Chair of the Communication Arts Department at Warner University. Tim's educational background in journalism and professional experience in radio and audio production includes serving as academic advisor to Warner's digital radio station. Dr. Craig's research familiarity with cult film...

Send us Fan Mail Rounding out the third part of our unit emphasis on "Cold War Creatures", cohosts Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry rev up their affection for Atomic Age allegories with director Gordon Douglas's 1954 classic, Them! The film experienced waves of praise among critics and moviegoers, followed by decades of broad audience obscurity, and then resurgent cult reverence...

Send us Fan Mail Traveling deeper into the second unit emphasis on "Cold War Creatures", cohosts Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry pivot away from Universal movie monsters to examine the alpha creature feature Asian import, Gojira! Setting a cinema standard for what would become the Kaiju sub-genre, Ishiro Honda's Godzilla (1954) functions as an allegorical post-war pandora'...

Send us Fan Mail Continuing the season seven theme Communicating Fears in Film, this episode marks the first "transitional film" slated to move conversation from the first unit focus on "Monstrous Metaphors" to the second unit emphasis on "Cold War Creatures".  Cohosts Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry close out their focus on the era of Universal's  classic m...

Send us Fan Mail In this nontraditional min-episode, Garret organizes a storytelling monologue coinciding with the occasion twin holiday of his birthday and election day in the U.S.A. Garret recounts his own election day adventures before celebrating the BIG 4-0 with an overview of key films and horror texts that communicated fear to and through each of his first four decades alive. References: Cu...

Send us Fan Mail In our first "Halloween Special" a seasonal spinoff with Unit I implications, host Garret Castleberry is joined by Communication and Rhetorical teacher-scholar Kyle Hammonds for a close examination of the Disney+ Marvel Entertainment special "Werewolf by Night" (2022). Garret and Kyle confess limited familiarity with Marvel's Werewolf by Night comic book t...

Send us Fan Mail In the third entry in our Communicating Fears in Film focus on "Monstrous Metaphors", cohosts Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry unveil the hidden mysteries detailed within director James Whale's horror film adaptation The Invisible Man (1933). The hosts peek into H. G. Wells' source material novel as well as subtle influences  connected to Universal's g...

Send us Fan Mail In this second entry in the Communicating Fears in Film focus on "Monstrous Metaphors", cohosts Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry reanimate the hidden horror history of director James Whale's horror film Frankenstein (1931). Adapted from Mary Shelly's 1818 novel Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus, Universal Studios solidified their "Classic Monster...

Send us Fan Mail In the Season 7 premiere, cohosts Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry wade into the entertainment genre of the American Horror Film. Their dialogue begins with an "origin story" segment in which they share personal introductions to the genre (2:18) before setting the stage for a focused discussion of Universal's first Classic Movie Monster released in 1931, Dracula...

Send us Fan Mail In this "teaser" episode to Special Topics in Media , communication and media studies professor and host Garret Castleberry provides an overview of this series (0:28) and its educational focus. His introduction conveys this season's master theme " Communicating Fears in Film " (1:30) before unpacking each of the five units under investigation in season sev...