The World According to Sesame Street

International students: Was Sesame Street -- a staple of American children'’s television for more than 30 years -- a part of your growing up? Perhaps as Plaza Sésamo (Mexico), Alam Simsim (Egypt), Ulitsa Sezam (Russia) or Zhima Jie (China).

The World According to Sesame Street, a new documentary premiering at the Sundance Film Festival this week, looks at the cultural impact of this celebrated program in other parts of the world. (Unlike most American media exports, Sesame Street is adapted to local cultures when it goes abroad.)

The feature-length film profiles the efforts of three producers from the Sesame Street Workshop to bring about local versions of the program in Kosovo, Bangladesh, and South Africa.

"Education is always more than simply alphabets and numbers, and the contradictions inherent in teaching humane values in worlds where AIDS, ethnic genocide, and poverty dominate the landscape make this film a primer on art, media, and intercultural dialogue," writes festival director Geoffrey Gilmore on the Sundance Web site.

Did you watch a local version of Sesame Street as a child, in Latin America, Asia, Africa, Europe, or the Middle East? If you did, or if you have any thoughts on the globalization of this American media icon, post your comments and impressions here.

In the meantime, check out these sources for more on the global phenomenon of Sesame Street:

"G" is for Growing: Thirty Years of Research on Children and Sesame Street
(O'Neill Stacks LC6579.S47 G58 2001)
This collection of research reports on Sesame Street includes a chapter, "The World of Sesame Street Research," on globalization covering the co-production model as well as curriculum and production differences and similarities across cultures.

Sesame Street Around the World
This section of the Sesame Street Web site provides information (in English and the native language) about programs in 10 different countries, with more to come.

Scholarly Article Search
Search for "sesame street" in Communication Abstracts and you'll find articles among the results focusing on programs in Mexico, Brazil, Hungary, and the Netherlands. Try the same search in the educational database ERIC and you'll find even more. (Add the word "foreign" or "international" to your ERIC search to pare down the results).

New Communication Books at BC

The January edition of New Communication Books in the BC Libraries is now online.

This edition features 19 books added to the collection in recent weeks, including titles in such areas as: Advertising & Public Relations; Communication & Culture; Journalism & News Media; Organizational Communication; and others.

Follow the links on the New Books page to view the catalog records for each of these titles and see if they are available. Links to past editions of New Communication Books are at the bottom of the page.

BC Faculty Papers Online: ICA Conference 2005

Papers by seven members of the BC Communication Department faculty that were presented at the 2005 conference of the International Communication Association are now available online via Communication & Mass Media Complete (CMMC).

BC faculty, students, and staff can access PDF versions of these papers by clicking on the links below. (If you're off campus, you'll be prompted for your BC username and password; on campus, no log-in is necessary.)

Neurological Correlates of Visual Creativity and Emotional Process. By Anne Marie Barry and Dennis Dake

Self-Disclosure and Relational Closeness in Established Heterosexual Male Friendships. By Jonathan Bowman

Attribution and Interpersonal Control Strategies in Couples Including One Depressed Individual.. By Ashley Duggan

Development Broadcasting and Global Media: Redefining an Old Concept in a New Era.. By Elfriede Fursich and Seema Shrikhande

"A Beard and a Pasty Forehead": Collective Memory of the First Kennedy-Nixon Debate".. By Dale Herbeck and Sara Mehltretter (BC '05)

Talking Smack: Verbal Aggression in Professional Wrestling.. By Rebecca M. Chory-Assad, Ron Tamborini, Paul Skalski, Kenneth Lachlan, and David Westerman

The Impact of Disposition and Motive on Acceptance for Violence: Evidence for Social Comparison Processes?. By Kenneth Lachlan

"...And something new": Same-sex marriage's influence on the understanding of same-sex relationships.. By Pamela Lannutti

These papers are among more than 1,200 from the conference, which was held in New York in May 2005. You can view the complete list of papers in CMMC. (Use the second search box to search among them.)

E-Journals: New Issues

New issues of the following journals are available online this week:

• Asian Journal of Communication
  
• Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
  
• Journal of Family Communication
  
• Journalism Studies
  
• Management Communication Quarterly
  
• Mass Communication & Society
  
• Media Psychology
  
• Research on Language & Social Interaction
  
• Space & Culture
  

Click on a title to access the issue. (Login with your BC username and password is required for off-campus access.)

Welcome to CommTopics!

CommTopics is a blog/Web site for communication studies students (and faculty) at Boston College from me, Ken Liss, the Communication Librarian at BC.

On this site, I'll bring you news, tips, suggestions, and ideas to help you make the most of research tools and resources available to you as a member of the BC community.

I'll include copies of the "Books & Bytes" information tips I present in the Communication Department's weekly Major Mail e-newsletter. I'll also highlight and review important, useful, or just plain interesting new books, Web sites, journal issues, and other sources I think you might find valuable.

I'm a news junkie -- online and off -- and I always have my eyes and ears open for communication-related stories in print, on radio and TV, and on the Web. I'll use CommTopics to share some of these, and I invite discussion of the communication questions they raise and how communication researchers might approach them.

CommTopics has also been set up to provide easy access to key BC communication resources. There are three drop-down menus at the top of the right-hand column. Use these to select and go to a database, a support page for a course you're enrolled in, or a helpful research guide. There are also links to Quest (the BC Libraries catalog) and, further down the column, to other useful resources.

CommTopics is designed to complement other ways I share information and ideas with you. If you have comments or suggestions about how to make CommTopics work better, please send them to me at lissk@bc.edu

Thanks,

- Ken