Ball State Professor to Appear on TCM
Vanessa Ament and TCM Host Ben Mankiewicz (photo courtesy TCM)
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA Ball State University telecommunications professor will this week appear on Turner Classic Movies. Vanessa Ament will give on-air film introductions as part of TCM’s "Mad About Musicals," which is part of a free online course at Ball State.
Ament is the chair of the Telecommunications Department at Ball State and will appear on TCM alongside host Ben Mankiewicz. The university says her appearance is the result of a partnership among TCM, Ball State and Canvas to provide the online multimedia course about the history of the musical genre and its evolution with culture and technology.
"This is an exciting partnership because so many people love musicals and TCM has the best collection of musicals dating back decades," Ament said. "Not only will you be able to watch great musicals but by taking the online class, you can learn so much about what makes them great. It was really fun to put together the course lessons with movie clip. From my standpoint, it was incredible to find out the stories behind the movies."
Ament comes from a Hollywood background as a Foley artist and voice actor for films such as "Platoon," "Predator," and "Die Hard."
Enrollment in the class is open until June 17. This will be the fourth massive open online course for TCM, with more than 44,000 people participating in the past three courses.