Set in 1960s New York, the sexy, stylized and provocative AMC drama follows the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue advertising, an ego-driven world where key players make an art of the sell.

Since its debut, the series has garnered two Emmy® Awards for Outstanding Drama Series; two Golden Globe® Awards for Best Television Drama Series; a Peabody Award; a Producers Guild Award; two Writers Guild Awards; AFI Awards for one of the Top 10 OutstandingTelevision Programs of 2007 and 2008; both the 2008 BAFTA Award and Royal Television Society Award for International Program; and four Television Critics Association Awards, including Program of the Year. Returning for its third season, the world of Mad Men is moving in a new direction --  as the business world and the private life of Don Draper become complicated in new ways.

To learn more about the show, click here.

Matthew Weiner is the series creator and executive producer for the AMC drama Mad Men, now in its third season. Weiner won two Emmys for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series – for the pilot, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, and for the second season finale, Meditations in an Emergency, written with Kater Gordon – and received four other writing nominations.  Weiner also achieved a Directors Guild nomination for his efforts behind the camera on Meditations in an Emergency.

Weiner was an executive producer and writer on The Sopranos on HBO. Along with the other producers, the show won the Emmy in 2004 and 2006 for Outstanding Drama Series and garnered Weiner two writing nominations with David Chase and Terence Winter. He also won a 2007 Writers Guild Award for the series and three PGA Golden Laurel Awards for Television Producer of the Year in Episodic.

Before working on The Sopranos, Weiner wrote for various television series, including The Naked Truth, Becker, and Andy Richter Controls the Universe. He also wrote and directed the independent feature, What Do You Do All Day?

Born in Los Angeles, Weiner studied Philosophy, Literature, and History at Wesleyan University. He also earned his MFA from the University of Southern California School of Cinema and Television. Weiner currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife and four sons.

Scott Hornbacher, Executive Producer of Mad Men, has won several awards for his work on the show, including two Emmy Awards and a Producer's Guild Award.

Hornbacher was Co-Producer on The Sopranos, the critically acclaimed drama series on HBO. As part of the directorial team, he was a co-recipient of the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Dramatic Series for the episode "Whitecaps”" and the pilot of Mad Men, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes."

Hornbacher also worked as Co-Producer on Season 6 of the television series Third Watch (NBC) and was UPM on the television movie Iron Jawed Angels (HBO), which was nominated for five Emmy Awards.  He produced Interview, a feature remake of a film by Theo Van Gogh.  Directed by Steve Buscemi and starring Steve Buscemi and Sienna Miller, it was released by Sony Classics in July 2007. 

Born and raised in Moorhead, Minnesota, Hornbacher studied filmmaking at Film in the Cities in St. Paul, Minnesota. After living and working in NYC for 19 years, he now lives in South Pasadena with his wife and three sons.

David Carbonara is the composer of the multiple award-winning, AMC hit television series Mad Men. For the show, Carbonara uses both contemporary evocative scoring and updated jazz from the period -- a sound that has become synonymous with Matthew Weiner's gripping series. Along with Lionsgate Music, David Carbonara has been developing The Mad Men Live Revue, which premiered last fall to rave reviews at Los Angeles' El Rey Theatre, with more productions upcoming. David is also looking forward to composing The Deep End, a legal drama for ABC which will premiere this January under the helm of creator David Hemmingson.

As a film composer, Carbonara's credits include Working Title's British comedy hit, The Guru (starring Heather Graham and Marisa Tomei), for which he artfully mixed traditional Indian instruments into a western ensemble. Also internationally, he scored two French produced films for director Amos Kolleck, Queenie in Love and Fast Food, Fast Woman, which premiered at Cannes, as well as Brazilian director Ana Carolina's Amélia. Other U.S. credits include David O. Russell's critically-acclaimed Spanking the Monkey, Nick Smith's Monumental and James Ryan's award-winning The Young Girl and the Monsoon. Carbonara has also scored the ABC pilot Elizabeth Street for executive producer Martin Scorsese and director Miguel Arteta and on My Sexiest Mistake for the Oxygen Network.

As a music editor, Carbonara has worked with directors Lasse Hallstrom, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard, M. Night Shyamalan, David Mamet, Milos Forman, Stanley Tucci, Steve Buscemi and Robert Benton, Bob Odenkirk and Ken Kwapis, and for academy-award winning composers Rachel Portman, Michel LeGrand and Howard Shore. A former jazz and touring trombonist, Carbonara has a bachelor degree in film scoring from the Berklee College of Music.

Amy Wells has just completed her 3rd season as the Set Decorator for Mad Men. A native of Rockland County, NY, Amy graduated from USC's School of Cinema-Television. In her early career, she was mentored by Academy Award-winning Set Decorator, Gretchen Ra (Memoirs of a Geisha) and by Jim Erickson (also an Academy Award-nominee for There Will Be Blood). Amy has decorated such feature films as: Clueless, The Phantom and American Pie. She has also decorated many Sit-coms and TV Movies. She has received 3 Emmy Nominations in her career -- 2 for Mad Men and the other in 1998 for the HBO Series From the Earth to the Moon.

Wells is married to Location Manager Eric Klosterman and has a 12 year old boy, Luke, who is a master at yo-yoing and three grown stepdaughters,  Elisa, Kenna and Maura.

Christopher Manley studied filmmaking at Temple University in Philadelphia. He then earned his MFA in cinematography from the American Film Institute, where he was awarded the Eastman-Kodak Scholarship Award. His AFI thesis, My Mother Dreams the Satan's Disciples in New York (1999), won the Academy Award for best live-action short film. Since AFI, Chris has filmed over a dozen independent movies including The Big Empty with Jon Favreau, and the critically-acclaimed Dahmer. More recently, he shot the movie Gracie, directed by Oscar-winner Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth). 

Chris has also filmed several TV movies and mini-series such as The Phantom Eye, an original movie for AMC, which earned him an Emmy. He was twice nominated by the A.S.C. for his episodic TV work on Threat Matrix and CSI:NY. He also shot the hit show Prison Break. Chris joined Mad Men at the beginning of the second season and received an Emmy nomination for his work.

Chris Nelson's career as a film editor began on the mini-series The Captains and the Kings in the late 70's. Soon after he began editing pilots, such as The Greatest American Hero, for Stephen Cannell. Nelson has received Best Editing Emmy Nominations for: Lost, Six Feet Under, China Beach, and The Greatest American Hero pilots. He also received an American Cinema Editors nomination for editing the West Wing pilot and Lost.

With over fifty television movies and pilots to his credit, Nelson feels he's been fortunate to have been part of a few that have had social significance. These include:  The three hour Showtime movie Thanks of a Grateful Nation, the PBS special I’ll Fly Away, the pilot China Beach, and the HBO pilot Six Feet Under. Nelson is thrilled to have completed his second season with Mad Men. 

Rich Sommer stars as Harry Crane on Mad Men. Sommer portrays a married up-and-coming media buyer on the series, which recently debuted its third season to record ratings. Along with his cast, Sommer won 2009's Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. Sommer made his feature film debut as Anne Hathaway's drinking buddy 'Doug' in The Devil Wears Prada. The actor’s extensive stage credits include 'Todd' in Far Away, 'Mike' in A Lie of the Mind, and 'William Gibbs' in Off the Map. He has several national commercials to his credit and recently guest starred on NBC's hit show The Office.

A student, performer and teacher of improvisation, Sommer received his training and experience from The Brave New Workshop in his hometown of Minneapolis and at the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York. He went on to study at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where he received his Master's Degree in Acting. It was at this university where he met his wife, Virginia. They currently reside in Los Angeles with their one year-old daughter, Beatrice.

  

ABOUT CTCS-467: TELEVISION SYMPOSIUM

Television Symposium is a 4-unit undergraduate elective course, taught by Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic Howard Rosenberg (L.A. Times) on Monday nights in The Ray Stark Family Theatre, SCA 108, from 7 - 10:15 P.M., that is open to ALL camus majors.

To register for the Spring 2010 semester of CTCS-467: Television Symposium, visit USC Web Registration and select Spring 2010, School of Cinematic Arts, Critical Studies (CTCS).

In recent semesters, guests have included:

From LOST: Damon Lindelof (creator), Carlton Cuse (exec producer), Bryan Burk (exec producer), Terry O'Quinn (actor), Michael Giacchino (composer)
From HOUSE: David Shore (creator), Garrett Lerner (exec producer, writer), Russel Friend (exec producer, writer)
From THE OFFICE: Ken Kwapis (director), Jenna Fischer (actor), John Krasinski (actor)
From TRUE BLOOD: Alan Ball (creator)
From THE UNITED STATES OF TARA: Diablo Cody (creator)
From GREY'S ANATOMY: Shonda Rhimes (creator), T.R. Knight (actor)
From ENTOURAGE: Doug Ellin (creator)
From IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA: Rob McElhenney (creator, actor), Charlie Day (actor, writer), Glenn Howerton (actor, writer)
From GOSSIP GIRL & CHUCK: Josh Schwartz (creator), Stephanie Savage (creator), Chris Fedak (creator)
From HEROES: Tim Kring (creator), Alan Arkush (exec producer, director), Greg Beeman (exec producer, director), Jeph Loeb (co-exec producer, writer), Masi Oka (actor)
From THE WIRE: David Simon (creator)
From RENO 911!: Carlos Alazraqui (actor), Wendy McLendon-Covey (actor), Cedric Yarbrough (actor)
From DEXTER: Clyde Phillips (producer, showrunner)
From THE RICHES: Eddie Izzard (actor, producer)
From BIG LOVE: Mark Olsen (creator), Will Scheffer (creator), Bill Paxton (actor)
From TRACEY TAKES ON...: Tracey Ullman (creator, actor)
From REAPER: Tom Spezialy Jr. (exec producer)
From DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES: Marc Cherry (creator)
From SCRUBS: Bill Lawrence (creator)
From THE L WORD: Ilene Chaiken (creator)
From EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND: Phil Rosenthal (creator)
From WEEDS: Jenji Kohan (creator)
From STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP: Thomas Schlamme (exec producer), Matthew Perry (actor), Nathan Corddry (actor), Steven Weber (actor)
From THE SIMPSONS: Ian Maxtone-Graham (exec producer, writer), Matt Selman (writer), Danny Chun (writer), Matt Warburton (writer)
From FAMILY GUY & AMERICAN DAD!: Seth MacFarlane (creator, actor), Chris Sheridan (exec producer, writer), Mike Barker (procuer, writer)

PLUS: Steven Bochco (producer), Ken Burns (director), Jim Burrows (director), Bob Weide (director), Rod Lurie (director), Michael Apted (director), Lisa Kudrow (actor), Andy Richter (actor), Tate Donovan (actor), Timothy Olyphant (actor), Bradley Whitford (actor), Timothy Busfield (actor), Eva Marie Saint (actor), Lily Tomlin  (actor), Bob Greenblatt (president of Showtime Network), Mike Darnell (president of Alternative Programming, FOX Network) and many, many others!!!