Brandon Taylor, an English Major in Critical Studies, was awarded $2,500 from the FCC S Undergraduate Student Research Award fund. The research project involved a critical investigation of how contemporary American commercial television programming creates empathetic routes toward sociopaths and what this relationship implies. He immersed himself in the relevant literature of Television Studies (Fiske, Mittel, Kellner, Feuer, etc.) and on Breaking Bad, exploring how it shifts the white male psychopath paradigm (Martin’s Difficult Men, Sepinwall’s The Revolution was Televised).
Brandon completed a series of steps to conceive of, research, compose, create, and edit a scholary journal article under the supervision of Dr. Daniel Keyes. The article is under review from the Montreal-based online film studies journal Offscreen.com. “I feel that my article will productively add to the discourse surrounding television and its continuously transforming ecology.” Says Taylor. “I am confident the paper may find a home there and that Mr. Taylor may continue to further develop the notion that Breaking Bad represents a rupture in industrial mass produced and disseminated narrative form.” Says Dr. Daniel Keyes, Brandon’s supervisor for this research project.
“The grant application was successful on every front. It was incredibly helpful, in terms of creating a space and time to do research on both my topic and the field, as well as granting me the time to work directly with Dr. Keyes, which proved invaluable.”
The Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies Undergraduate Research Awards provide undergraduate students support to engage in research and creation activities over the summer months. The award is meant to encourage undergraduate students who are enrolled in a major in FCCS B.A. or B.F.A. programs (English, Cultural Studies, Art History and Visual Culture, French, Spanish, Creative Writing, Visual Arts and Interdisciplinary Performance, or Combined Majors) to pursue innovative and original research under the supervision of one or more FCCS faculty members.