Religion and Film Objectives

Religion and Film
Course Objectives

Course objectives are organized along four concurrent tracks. By the end of the semester students should have:

gained an introduction to the process and technology of film production, including a mastery of common terminology;
learned how to watch a film critically and narrate how its form and content work together to produce/construct meaning;
and applied the above three objectives to the cultural production/construction of the term and experience of "religion".

Course objectives will be approached through film viewing outside of class; through reading Louis Giannietti's Understanding Movies and various articles in a coursepack; through class lecture; and through extensive, in-class group work. Each week is organized around a theme; the film, readings and class work should operate with and against each other to spur critical thought about the theme at hand. Students are strongly encouraged to e-mail suggestions for questions, group work, and class discussion to the professor and/or TA before Tuesday's class.

Course philosophy: Film has been likened to a language and watching films as analogous to reading or interpreting a language. This metaphor is not fully appropriate but it does usefully convey the fact that directors rely on shared conventions and symbols to succinctly communicate complex ideas. In a similar manner "religion" can be likened to a language, with its own metaphors, symbols, and rituals. In short, religion and film are two different sign systems or "semiotics." The more time a student spends reflecting on her/his own presuppositions about religion and film, the more the student will gain from the weekly juxtapositions of films and texts. The extnesive group work is designed to encourage such reflection; the suggestion that students e-mail the professor and TA serves as a further incentive toward this goal. It is my conviction that learning does not occur from one film, one lecture, or one text. Rather learning occurs in the gaps and bridges between films, lectures and texts. This conviction led me to put the epigraph from F. Jameson on the syllabus: "Reading having been redrawn in contemporary theory, perhaps it is now time to restructure our concept of learning itself."