There's no question that the HBO series The Wire changed both television and the way the world looks at Baltimore, now it's changing the way university professors are educating their students. The seminal show about life on streets of Mob City has become a teaching tool for more than just film classes.
Here's an excerpt:
"Among the police officers and drug dealers and stickup men and politicians and dockworkers and human smugglers and teachers and students and junkies and lawyers and journalists who populate the late, great HBO series The Wire, there is one academic. His name is David Parenti and he teaches social work at the University of Maryland, Baltimore.
Academics, on the other hand, can't seem to get enough of The Wire. Barely two years after the show's final episode aired�and with Simon's new show, Treme, premiering next month on HBO�there have already been academic conferences, essay anthologies, and special issues of journals dedicated to the series. Not content to write about it and discuss it among themselves, academics are starting to teach it, as well. Professors at Harvard, U.C.�Berkeley, Duke, and Middlebury are now offering courses on the show."
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