Thomas Johnson

PAID 111/112: Enduring Questions

Paideia is named after the ancient Greek word for “education.” Paideia 111 and 112 seeks to “lay the groundwork for your liberal arts education by helping you develop skills of careful analysis and well-reasoned, articulate responses (spoken and written) so that you can read and understand challenging texts for yourself, and express your views in a way that others will respect” (Paideia Reader).

INTS 130: Scholars Colloquium

This is a 1-credit course that provides small-group discussions of readings, of local or national current events, or of the amazing cultural and intellectual events available on campus.  Some sections of the colloquium focus on a particular theme for the semester; others range more broadly to include attendance at such events as lectures (by Luther faculty members and visiting scholars and dignitaries), concerts (ranging from classical to jazz to contemporary), theatre and dance performances, poetry readings, and art shows.  The various sections of Scholars Colloquium are taught by faculty members from across the curriculum.

COMS 133: Media Literacy

This course considers how and why media matters. The focus is on engaging, analyzing, and evaluating mediated texts and practices, in addition to articulating and cultivating arguments about their cultural, political, and social merits. The course includes lectures on programs, audiences, institutions, and contexts, as well screenings and discussion.

COMS 239: Environmental Communication in Belize

This course examines environmental communication and the public sphere in Belize with particular focus on the significant role of eco-adventure tourism in the country.  Topics that will be reviewed, analyzed, and critiqued include the study of environmental rhetoric and discourse, media and environmental journalism, public participation in environmental decision-making practices, varying regulatory factors, social marketing and advocacy campaigns, environmental collaboration and conflict resolution, risk communication, and representations of nature in popular culture and green marketing.  Information on these subjects will be drawn from lectures and discussions, as well as from visits with government officials, local non-governmental organizations (NGOs), eco-tourism venders, tourists, and other key stakeholders.  These undertakings will provide an understanding of how individuals, institutions, societies, and cultures craft, distribute, receive, understand, and use messages about the environment to influence attitudes and initiatives related to its use.

COMS 239: Communication and Sport in New Zealand

This course investigates communication and sport in New Zealand with specific focuses on media, history, technology, consumer culture, nation-building, globalization, player-coach relationships, and team/group cohesion. Information on these subjects will be drawn from lectures, discussions, and interviews, as well as from event attendance and visits to museums, media companies, training locations, and club headquarters. These undertakings will provide an in-depth framework on the sport ethnography of the country, as well as athletic leadership styles and techniques that are in use and provide structure for sport in New Zealand.

COMS/PE 239: Communication and Adventure Recreation in New Zealand

This course investigates the relationship between communication and adventure recreation in New Zealand.  Specific communication-related focuses on media and technology, consumer culture, globalization, and nation building will be addressed through a variety of adventure activities that highlight community sustainability, risk benefit factors, experience-based judgment, ethical behavior, and effective leadership.  Information on these subjects will be drawn from lectures, discussions, and interviews, as well as participation in adventure excursions.  Ultimately, these undertakings will provide an in-depth framework on how New Zealand uses its unique places, landscapes, and resources to brand itself as a destination for outdoor exploration.

COMS/PE 239: How Soccer Explains Europe: Coaching Methodologies and Critical Approaches

This course will examine all facets of coaching, specifically the coaching of soccer, as well as investigate the roles of sport media and the general impact of soccer on communities. Using various texts, videos, lectures, and on-field discussions, we will engage in not only the technical/tactical aspects of the game of soccer, but also how to manage the different facets of running a soccer team. Additionally, we will juxtapose the coaching methods, tactics and technical nuances of the different nations we will be visiting. Furthermore, we will study the important cultural, social, and political roles of soccer in these locations, as well as worldwide. Finally, to recognize how soccer, as well as mediated soccer, can be approached critically and read in different ways, topics such as globalization, nationalism, labor migration, hooliganism, fandom, colonialism, identification, and commercialism will be discussed.

COMS/LS 239: Tourism Ethnography in Hawai’i

This course analyzes tourism in Hawai’i with a specific focus on doing ethnography to better understand the interests of visitors, locals, and other key stakeholders. Topics such as mediated representations, consumer actions, recreational opportunities, leadership initiatives, and sustainability considerations will be addressed via lectures, discussions, excursions, interviews, and most notably, participant observations in which texts such as journal entries, field notes, and photographs will be created to represent key aspects of field experience. These undertakings will provide an in-depth framework as to how and why Hawai’i, with its distinct terrains, communities, and resources, is a place to value, to preserve, and to celebrate.

COMS 258: Video Production

This course explores video production, primarily single-camera field production and editing. The focus is on narrative as communication, message-centered content, and technical expertise. The course includes lectures on phases of production, screen composition, and color temperature, training sessions on lighting techniques, sound recording, and post-production, as well as screenings and discussion.

COMS 260: Communication and Sport

This course draws from scholarly work in critical media studies, relational studies, and sociology to examine cultural, political, and social roles of sport in contemporary society. The focus is on how sport, as well as mediated sport, can be approached critically and read in different ways. The course includes lectures on nationalism, commodification, and identity, as well as screenings and discussion.

COMS 320: Urban America and Serial Television: Critically Analyzing The Wire

Frequently hailed as a masterpiece of American television, The Wire shines a light on urban decay in contemporary America, creating a dramatic portrait of Baltimore’s police, drug trade, shipping docks, city hall, public schools, and newspapers over five serialized seasons. In this course, we will watch and discuss all of this remarkable – and remarkably entertaining – series, and place it within the dual contexts of contemporary American society and the aesthetics of television. This course focuses on close viewing and discussion, and opportunities for critical analysis and research about the show’s social contexts and aesthetic practices.

COMS/IDS 335: Masculinity in Film

This course takes a feminist perspective to analyze portrayals of sex and gender in film with a particular emphasis on how men and masculinity can be represented. The focus is on how films construct different notions of gender, how films can be read in different ways, and to what social uses film portrayals may be put. The course includes lectures on film criticism, gender theory, and theories of representation, as well as screenings and discussion.

COMS 347: Critical Television Studies

This course examines television within the context of cultural, aesthetic, technological, textual, regulatory, social, and political practices. There are a number of intersecting aims: to trace the development of television (mainly in the United States, but with attention to global systems); to map the contours of critical TV studies; to understand theories and methods of television scholarship; to theorize television’s relationship to consumer culture, history, capitalism, diversity, citizenship, everyday life, and selfhood (among other key concepts); and to entertain new directions in critical TV studies. Because television is a medium in transition, the extent to which television remains (or has never been) a truly distinct medium, and its current relationship to media convergence, will also be considered.

COMS 358: Documentary Storytelling

This course builds on video production skills developed in COMS 258. The focus is on researching, scripting, planning, producing, and editing short subject documentary films. The course includes lectures on the history of the genre, exemplar filmmakers, and dramatic structure, training sessions on shooting, interviewing, and advanced editing, as well as screenings and discussion.

• Ph.D., Communication Studies, University of Minnesota, 2010
  Dissertation: “NFL Films and the Re-Production of Pro Football”
• M.A., Communication Studies, University of Minnesota, 2006
  Thesis: “Relationships Between Televised Sports Viewing Habits and Attitudes About Masculinity”
• B.A., Communication, Saint John’s University, 2002

Publications

Thomas C. Johnson, “Television, Pro Football and Mobile Privatization, 1939-1970,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 40 (2021).

Thomas C. Johnson, “Television, Pro Football and Mobile Privatization, 1939-1970,” Pro Football Hall of Fame Archives (2021).

Thomas C. Johnson, “Producing, Distributing, and Teaching Ironhead,” Journal of Media Education, 7 (2016): 14-17.

Jason Moyer and Thomas C. Johnson, “College Soccer and Evangelical Christianity,” Casing Sport Communication (2015): 282-286.

Thomas C. Johnson, “Deconstructing NFL Films’ They Call It Pro Football,” Teaching Media Quarterly, 2 (2012).

Thomas C. Johnson and Edward Schiappa, “An Exploratory Study of the Relationships Between Televised Sports Viewing Habits and Conformity to Masculine Norms,” Journal of Sports Media, 5 (2010): 53-78.

Thomas C. Johnson, “Television and Children: What Every Parent Needs to Know,” http://criticalmedialiteracy.umn.edu (2008).

Documentary Films

Post Production Consultant.  “Decoding the Driftless.”  Shot on high definition video, edited with Adobe Premiere Pro CC.  Runtime: 60 minutes.  2018.  Winner of over twenty awards, including the Humanitarian Award of Distinction at the IndieFEST Film Awards, Best Documentary at the Beloit International Film Festival, and the Titletown Jury Award at the Green Bay Film Festival.  Official selection of the Flyway Film Festival, the Driftless Film Festival, the Frozen River Film Festival, the Oneota Film Festival, the Indie Film Wisconsin Film Festival, the Cape May Film Festival, the Julien Dubuque International Film Festival, the #Adventure MN Film Fest, the Red Cedar Film Festival, the Festigious International Film Festival, the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, the Gold Movie Awards, the New York Film Awards, the FilmCon Awards, the Iowa Independent Film Festival, the Wildlife Conservation Film Festival, the IndieFEST Film Awards, the Eau Claire World Film Festival, the Conserve Sauk Film Festival, the Weyauwega International Film Festival, the Florence Film Awards, the Beloit International Film Festival, the Accolade Global Film Competition, the Green Bay Film Festival, the Fargo Film Festival, the Vegas Film Awards, the WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival, and the Depth of Field International Film Festival.

Producer (with Novian Whitsitt).  “Africa: Not A Single Story.”  Shot on high definition video, edited with Final Cut Pro.  Runtime: 16 minutes.  2017.

Producer/Director/Editor.  “Marieke.”   Shot on high definition video, edited with Final Cut Pro.  Runtime: 7 minutes.  2017.  Best Documentary at the Iowa Motion Picture Association Awards.  Official selection of the Tucson Film & Music Festival, the Lake Charles Film & Music Festival, The Block art & film festival, the Flyway Film Festival, the Twin Cities Film Fest, the St. Cloud Film Fest, the Weyauwega International Film Festival, the CineSol Film Festival, the Oregon Short Film Festival, Iowa Public Television’s “The Film Lounge,” the Wildwood Film Festival, the Colony Short Film Festival, the Royal Film Festival, SHORT to the Point, the Wisconsin Film Festival, the Speechless Film Festival, the Oneota Film Festival, the Chippewa Valley Film Festival, the Snake Alley Festival of Film, the Interrobang Film Festival, the Pittsburgh Independent Film Festival, the Square Lake Film & Music Festival, the Iowa Independent Film Festival, the Sioux City International Film Festival, the Maumee Film Festival, the Film Girl Film Festival, the Fresh Coast Film Festival, the Eau Claire World Film Festival, the East Lansing Film Festival, the Big Water Film Festival, the Muscatine Independent Film Festival, and the First Friday Film Festival – Kansas City, the Door County Short Film Festival, the Film as Idea, Film as Film, Film as Art International Film Festival, and the Greenwich Village Film Festival.  Additional screenings at Oneota Community Food Co-op, HyVee Corporate, Decorah Rotary Club, Arlin Falck Assisted Living, and Thew Brewing.

Writer/Director/Editor (with Neal Abbott).  “Ironhead.”  Shot on high definition video, edited with Final Cut Pro.  Runtime: 9 minutes.  2015.  Honorable mention for the Walter Ordway Best of Fest Award at the Oneota Film Festival.  Best Short Documentary at the Greenwich Village Film Festival.  Official selection of the Oneota Film Festival, the Yellowknife International Film Festival, the Milwaukee Film Festival, the Fargo Fantastic Film Festival, the Liverpool Lift-Off Online Film Festival, the Frozen River Film Festival, the Speechless Film Festival, the Red Wasp Independent Film Festival, the Fargo Film Festival, the Wild Rose Independent Film Festival, the Let’s All Be Free Film Festival, the Greenwich Village Film Festival, the Kansas International Film Festival, the Sioux City International Film Festival, Iowa Public Television’s “The Film Lounge,” the Beloit International Film Festival, the Auckland International Film Festival, The Block art & film festival, the First Friday Film Festival – Kansas City, the MidWest WeirdFest, the Deep in the Heart Film Festival, and the Fresh Coast Film Festival.  Semi-Finalist at the Meraki Film Festival.  Additional screenings at White Bear Center for the Arts, Winneshiek Hotel, Cedar Rapids Houby Days, the 8^th International Conference on Contemporary Cast Iron Art, Bethany Lutheran College, Independent Lifestyles Live Stream Studio, Decorah Rotary Club, St. Paul Art Crawl, and the Mid-South Sculpture Alliance Conference.

Writer/Director/Editor (with Michael Crowe).  “Hours with Amanda.”  Shot on high definition video, edited with Final Cut Pro.  Runtime: 5 minutes.  2013.  Official selection of the Oneota Film Festival, the Speechless Film Festival, and the Mt. Hood Independent Film Festival.

Writer/Director/Editor (with Michael Crowe).  “Hours with Ben.”  Shot on high definition video, edited with Final Cut Pro.  Runtime: 5 minutes.  2013.  Official selection of the Oneota Film Festival and the Speechless Film Festival.

Writer/Director/Editor (with Michael Crowe).  “Hours with Novian.”  Shot on high definition video, edited with Final Cut Pro.  Runtime: 5 minutes.  2013.  Official selection of the Oneota Film Festival, the Speechless Film Festival, and Louisville’s International Festival of Film.

Writer/Director.  “Order in Chaos.”  Shot on DV, edited with Final Cut Pro.  Runtime: 17 minutes.  2002.  Debuted at Fashion Institute of Technology.

Producer/Director.  “Sons of the Road.”  Shot on DV, edited with Final Cut Pro.  Runtime: 22 minutes.  2001.  Finalist for Best Documentary at the Movie Gallery Student Video Competition, Auburn University, and Winner for Best Documentary at the Georgia Tech Cable Network Film and Video Festival.

Thomas Johnson’s CV