Film Across the Humanities

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This Summer course is intended for Notre Dame faculty and graduate students who would like to incorporate films into their courses but have hesitated to do so because they have had little or no formal training in film studies. I have designed a week-long intensive course that will solve that problem by exposing seminar participants to the different pedagogical strategies they might use to incorporate films in their courses.We will begin with a crash-course in close visual analysis because I think that's the chief source of anxiety. So I've got this image up on the wall, what do I do with it? How do I get my students to be analytical about those images? Then we'll explore the various ways that really productive interdisciplinary study can be achieved through film analysis. How can we use films effectively to pursue aesthetic, political, philosophical, or theological issues? Most importantly, how can we talk about film as a "way of knowing" in what are increasingly visual cultures? During each morning session, I'll introduce a variety of approaches through lecture, scene analysis, and short selected readings. We'll have a screening each day, right after lunch, and then we'll discuss pragmatic utilization of those methods in our afternoon discussions of the film, focusing on specific applications in courses now being taught or in the process of being developed. Screenings and discussions in the Browning Cinema in the Performing Arts Center.