January 23:   Approaches to the Study of Religion in Film

• John Lyden, "To Commend Or Critique: The Question of Religion and Film Studies," Journal of Religion and Film, 1:2 (Fall 1997).

January 28 and 30: Race, Social Reform and Early Cinema

Films: Regeneration (Raoul Walsh, 1915) and Broken Blossoms, or The Yellow Man and the Girl (D.W. Griffith, 1919)

• Kevin Brownlow, Behind the Mask of Innocence - Sex, Violence, Prejudice and Crime: Films of Social Conscience in the Silent Era, 182-207
• Kay Sloan, Loud Silents: Origins of the Social Problem Film, 17-35
• Gina Marchetti, Romance and the Yellow Peril: Race, Sex, and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction, chapter 2
• Sam Fox Moving Picture Music Volume 1 (1913): (requires a sound card and a midi player)
      Church Music; Sailor Music; Plaintive Music; Death Scene; Oriental Music; Chinese Music

February 4 and 6: Religious Voices

Film: The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927)

• Michael Rogin, Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot, chapter 4
• Timothy Corrigan, A Short Guide to Writing About Film, chapters 1-2

February 11and 13: Hollywood Pictures and All-Black World

Film: Hallelujah (King Vidor, 1929)

• Thomas Cripps, Slow Face to Black: The Negro in American Film, 1900-1942, chapter 10
• Jessica H. Howard, "Hallelujah!: Transformation in Film," African American Review 30 (1996): 441-451
• Corrigan, A Short Guide, chapters 4 and 6

February 18 and 20: Gender, Religion and Censorship

Film: The Miracle Woman (Frank Capra, 1931)

• Lea Jacobs, The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film, 1928-1942, chapters 1 and 3
• "The Production Code," in John Belton, ed., Movies and Mass Culture
• Corrigan, A Short Guide, chapter 3

February 25 and 27: Picturing Catholics in Pluralist America

Film: The Bells of St. Mary's (Leo McCarey, 1945)

• Mary Gordon: "Father Chuck: A Reading of Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary’s, or Why Priests Made Us Crazy," South Atlantic Quarterly 93 (Summer 1994): 591-601.
• Francis G. Couvares, "Hollywood, Main Street and the Church: Trying to Censor the Movies Before the Production Code," in Francis G. Couvares, ed., Movie Censorship and American Culture

March 4 and 6: Religious Passing and the Post-War Message Movie

Film: Gentleman's Agreement (Elia Kazan, 1947)

• Rogin, Blackface, White Noise, chapter 7

SPRING BREAK

March 25 and 27: The Bible Epic

Film: The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. Demille, 1956)

• Alan Nadel, "God's Law and the Wide Screen: The Ten Commandments as Cold War 'Epic'," PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 108:3 (May 1993): 415-30.
• Thomas Pauly, "The Way to Salvation: The Hollywood Blockbuster of the 1950s," Prospects: An Annual Journal of American Cultural Studies 5 (1980): 467-487.

April 1 and 3: Religion and Horror

Film: The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)

• Mark Kermode, The Exorcist (British Film Institute, 1997)

April 8 and 11: Jesus Returns

Film: The Last Temptation of Christ (Martin Scorsese, 1988)

April 15 and 17: African Diaspora Feminist Cinema

Film: Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash, 1993)

• Joel Brouwer, "Repositioning: Center and Margin in Julie Dash's Daughters of The Dust," African American Review 29 (Spring 1995):5-16
• Course Project Website on Daughters of the Dust made by students at The College of New Jersey.

April 22 and 24: Religion and the Recovery of Ethnicity

Film: Household Saints (Nancy Savoca, 1993)

• Edvige Giunta, "The Quest for True Love: Ethnicity in Nancy Savoca's Domestic Film Comedy," MELUS 22 (Summer '97), 75-89
• Aaron Baker and Juliann Vitullo, "Mysticism and the Household Saints of Everyday Life," in Voices in Italian Americana 7: 2 (Fall 1996): 55-68.

April 29 and May 1: The New Evangelical Cinema

Film: The Omega Code (Robert Marcarelli, 1999)

May 6: Concluding Reflections