REL 229
Reel Jesus: Reading the Christian Bible and Film in the U.S.A. Spring 2015
Division II Writing Skills
Cross-listed AMST 229
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

In this course we examine some of the myriad ways that Christian biblical narratives have appeared in certain movies. What are the overt and subtle ways that these films seek to interpret and employ biblical texts? Why do they draw upon the texts they do and read them as they read them? What can cinematic interpretations of biblical texts reveal to us about how these texts are used in broader U.S. culture? How does an awareness of this scriptural dimension in a work of “popular culture” affect our interpretation of both the film and the scriptural text’s meanings? How do varying interpretations of biblical texts help us to understand cinematic meaning? By assuming that we can read both biblical texts and films in multiple and contradictory ways, this class can use film as the occasion for interpreting, analyzing, and debating the meanings, cultural functions, and affective responses generated by biblical narratives in film. Finally, this course asks us to analyze how movies may interpret certain biblical texts in order to crystallize and reflect certain political, economic, ethnic, racial, sexual, and social parameters of U.S. cultures. Attention to the biblical imagination of U.S. cinema and the cinematic imagination of biblical texts will necessitate interdisciplinary study of text and representation and a concern with the implications of ways in which we read texts and films. While this course will read selected biblical and extra-canonical texts, including selections from canonical and non-canonical gospels, the letters of Paul, and the book of Revelation, our foci will be on the way that movies (and the people who make them and watch them) seek to make meaning out of and with reference to these biblical texts.
The Class: Format: lecture/discussion
Limit: 19
Expected: 12
Class#: 3739
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: evaluation based on participation, short writing exercises (including three 1-pg film analyses and three 1-pg text analyses), one 3-pg analytical essay that will also be revised, a 6-pg synthetic midterm essay, and a final 10-pg review essay
Prerequisites: none
Distributions: Division II Writing Skills
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
REL 229 Division II AMST 229 Division II
Attributes: AMST Arts in Context Electives
AMST Comp Studies in Race, Ethnicity, Diaspora

Class Grid

Course Catalog Archive Search

TERM/YEAR
TEACHING MODE
SUBJECT
DIVISION



DISTRIBUTION



ENROLLMENT LIMIT
COURSE TYPE
Start Time
End Time
Day(s)