Ph.D. Social Science, Syracuse University’s Maxwell School
M.A. Television, Radio, Film, Syracuse University’s Newhouse School
B.S. Communication, Cornell University
Dr. Todd Sodano has been a faculty member at Fisher since 2008. He teaches classes in video storytelling, screenwriting, filmmaking, television production, and HBO’s The Wire.
Dr. Sodano’s advanced production classes have premiered their semester-long television and film projects to packed houses at The Little Theatre in downtown Rochester. He has traveled with his students to New York City to engage in professional development, networking, and benchmarking, in which they tour landmark media buildings and museums, and meet with media and communication professionals—many of whom are Fisher alums.
He earned his bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and his master’s and his doctorate from Syracuse University. An HBO fanatic, Dr. Sodano wrote his dissertation on The Wire and once appeared as an extra on The Sopranos. Other TV favorites include The West Wing, Sports Night, Gilmore Girls, The Bear, Friday Night Lights, Frasier, Seinfeld, Deadwood, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul.
He has spoken at Harvard Law School and Emerson College and has published articles about teaching The Wire, today’s TV-viewing behaviors, post-9/11 television programming, and emerging educational technologies.
His favorite movies include GoodFellas, The Godfather parts I and II (rumor has it a part III exists), Rocky (most of them), Network, Dazed and Confused, Pulp Fiction, Cinema Paradiso, Midnight Run, Raging Bull, Nobody’s Fool, and A Bronx Tale.
Publications
- Television’s Paradigm (Time)shift: Production and Consumption Practices in the Post-Network Era, Time in Television Narrative: Exploring Temporality in 21st Century Programming (edited by Melissa Ames), 2013.
- Nine Innings and 9/11: Tragedy, the Passage of Time, and America’s Pastime, Identity and Myth in Sports Documentaries (edited by Z. Ingle and D.M. Suerta), 2012.
- Integrating Lecture Capture as a Teaching Strategy to Improve Student Presentation Skills Through Self-Assessment, Active Learning in Higher Education, 2011. Co-authored with C. Smith.