Announcing A New Post Series - "The Wire" Class Follow-Along

Follow along as I teach HBO’s The Wire for a second time.

This Fall marks my second opportunity to teach HBO’s ‘The Wire’ in the Liberal Arts department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I’m very grateful to the school and, in particular, to the FYS Coordinator, Kirin Wachter-Grene, for renewing my class. 

I’m often asked to share my syllabus or readings and sometimes I forget to email the people who ask me (sorry!) but I thought, this year, I’d do a loose follow-along to my class and perhaps it’ll inspire some people to re-watch ‘The Wire’ or, who knows, watch it for the first time. 

I anticipate that this series will feature a variety of content; it can serve as a watch-along companion; it will provide fun readings to pair with the show. It may have some of my writing exercises and some of my lecture notes and slides as well as reflections on my students discussions. 

Here’s my syllabus for the class. LINK.

Here’s a link to the drive folder of the readings.  LINK

Each of the readings is numbered in the rough order that we’ll be following them. The academic essays we read are not linked here; I will share them as the follow-along progresses.

Oh, and, you’re going to need an HBO Max subscription for the months of Sep-Dec. This will cost you $10 per month. 

At SAIC, this is an FYS class so the focus is writing — getting students to learn the fundamentals of academic writing while focusing our discussion on the form and content of, ‘The Wire’; so you can expect my Substack content to have some bleed from that emphasis. 

If you want pure watch-along content, I heartily recommend Alan Sepinwall’s reviews for each and every episode. 

Let me set the pace for you. In my class, we watch Season 1 - 4; and we watch the episodes at a rate of roughly 4 per week. But since my first day of class isn’t until Sep 11th (Thank you, Labor Day!), you have some time to get ahead of the curve. 

Now, I will say that if you’re stressed and looking for a tune-out show, then skip “The Wire”; it’s a show that requires the viewer to pay attention. It rewards the alert viewer; however, some of us just want to watch T.V. to unwind. And if that’s the case, don’t feel pressured to watch the show no matter how many people tell you that you’re missing out. 

But, if you are interested in following this series, look out for (THE WIRE) as a tag in your email.

Like I said, most of my students have never even heard of the show. But the writing, the cinematography, the actor’s performances, and the whole body of art won over every single one of my students last year. Hopefully, it wins you over, too! 

Follow this series (The Wire Class) for more of this content. Otherwise, if you prefer my other content, there’s always Novels in Translation or Notes on Japan and Japanese Language Learning, or random Wikipedia Walks. 

If you do decide to follow along, I’d love to know. Let me know in the comments or by messaging me. 

Enjoy the dog days of summer! 

— Raghav