Connor said he thought these potential problems had been ably handled by the course’s head teaching fellow, Gustavo S. Turner, calling him “part of the glue that held [the course] together.”

Turner was unable to comment last night.

Connor said he expected Turner to return to assist with Mitchell’s VES course next year.

“The second time around is always better,” Connor said.

And Rentschler said Mitchell was dedicated to fixing any flaws that had cropped up in an otherwise-successful term.

“The understanding we reached is Elvis...looked forward to ‘getting it right,’ as he kept saying,” Rentschler said.

Fox said that as far as he was concerned, the fact that Mitchell had to fit his Harvard classes into a busy schedule of film events in New York and Los Angeles was a plus.

“If anything, for me it adds to his cachet,” Fox said. “I’d rather I had more teachers who were flying back and forth than teachers who have nothing better to do than teach a course at Harvard.”

Fox said he felt Mitchell’s star power could only help the University.

“I’m very happy to have him back, because his name’s a big draw for the school and the VES department,” Fox said.

With Harvard poised to offer undergraduates a concentration option in film studies for the first time this fall, Connor and Rentschler echoed Fox’s sentiment.

“It never hurts a fledgling program to have courses about which there is campus-wide buzz,” Connor said. “It can only whet your appetite.”

And Rentschler said he hoped the open-enrollment VES course’s large size could make it serve as a “feeder” for the debuting film studies concentration option.

Rentschler said VES 173x had enrolled over 100 students this term, and that next spring’s course would likely also be open-enrollment.

Rentschler and Connor said Mitchell did not have to go through a lengthy bureaucratic reappointment process because VES already had an open spot for a visiting lecturer next year, as Connor said he thought Af-Am also had.

Af-Am administrators and faculty could not be reached for detailed comment this week.

—Staff writer Simon W. Vozick-Levinson can be reached at vozick@fas.harvard.edu.