Teaching Religion and Film TEACHINGRELIGIOUSSTUDIESSERIES SERIESEDITOR SusanHenking,HobartandWilliamSmithColleges APublicationSeriesof TheAmericanAcademyofReligion and OxfordUniversityPress TEACHINGLEVI-STRAUSS EditedbyHansH.Penner TEACHINGISLAM EditedbyBrannonM.Wheeler TEACHINGFREUD EditedbyDianeJonte-Pace TEACHINGDURKHEIM EditedbyTerryF.GodloveJr. TEACHINGAFRICANAMERICANRELIGIONS EditedbyCarolynM.JonesandTheodoreLouisTrost TEACHINGRELIGIONANDHEALING EditedbyLindaL.BarnesandIne´sTalamantez TEACHINGNEWRELIGIOUSMOVEMENTS EditedbyDavidG.Bromley TEACHINGRITUAL EditedbyCatherineBell TEACHINGCONFUCIANISM JeffreyL.Richey Teaching Religion and Film edited by gregory j. watkins 1 2008 3 OxfordUniversityPress,Inc.,publishesworksthatfurther OxfordUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellence inresearch,scholarship,andeducation. Oxford NewYork Auckland CapeTown DaresSalaam HongKong Karachi KualaLumpur Madrid Melbourne MexicoCity Nairobi NewDelhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto Withofficesin Argentina Austria Brazil Chile CzechRepublic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore SouthKorea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright#2008byTheAmericanAcademyofReligion PublishedbyOxfordUniversityPress,Inc. 198MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NewYork10016 www.oup.com OxfordisaregisteredtrademarkofOxfordUniversityPress Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced, storedinaretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans, electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording,orotherwise, withoutthepriorpermissionofOxfordUniversityPress. LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Teachingreligionandfilm/editedbyGregoryJ.Watkins. p.cm.—(Teachingreligiousstudies) Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. ISBN978-0-19-533598-9 1. Motionpictures—Religiousaspects. 2. Motionpictures—Moralandethicalaspects. 3. Religion—Studyandteaching. I. Watkins,GregoryJ. PN1995.5.T372008 791.43'682—dc22 2007040450 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica onacid-freepaper The manuscript for this volume happened to be completed a couple of days after the death of Ingmar Bergman. A classroom screening of Bergman’s The Seventh Seal my freshman year of college had a profound impact on me. Having come to college from a small farming town in Idaho, I had no idea such a movie was possible. My now deep and abiding interest in the connection between re- ligion and film started with that screening. I dedicate this volume to the memory of Ingmar Bergman. This page intentionally left blank Preface This project was inspired by a suggestion from Diane Jonte-Pace, whom I would like to thank.I had just been hired to teach aclass on religion and film at Santa Clara University. Fresh from the pub- licationof her own volume in the AAR TeachingSeries,Teaching Freud, Jonte-Pace encouraged me to considerdoing the same for re- ligionandfilm.Theideawasslowtotakehold.Iwasonlystartingto understand how to tackletheintersection between religion—that di- verse andcomplicated area ofhuman cultureand experience—and theextremelypowerfulmediumoffilm.Butbywayoftheclassroom (andwith thanks to my many curious and thoughtful students at SantaClara and Stanford) I quickly began to see theintellectual and pedagogical promise ofbringingreligion andfilm together. Part of thatpromisecomesfromthefactthatwe,asascholarlycommunity, are just beginning to discoverthe many ways we can investigate andteachthisintersection.Indeed,partoftheenjoymentofteaching this material isthatour challengesas scholars can be sharedin the classroom—thestudentscanplayaroleintheinvestigationbytelling us who they are as movie viewers and what they findthemselves thinkingand feeling whenthey watch amovie. However, I also learned that very little material was available on thepedagogical challengesin the religion and film classroom. Finally, with Jonte-Pace’sinvitation in mind, Itested thewaters by askingafew well-known names inthefield (whom Idid notknow personally)whethertheywouldbeinterestedincontributingtosucha volume.From thevery start, thecontributors to thisbook accepted the invitation enthusiastically—and I thank them for the hardwork they putinto thiswonderful collection of essays. Iwouldalso like to thankSusan Henking,the AAR TeachingSeries editor, for her viii preface friendlyandinformativesupportthroughoutthisprocess,fromthenumerous proposal drafts to final OUP approval, as well as Cynthia Read and Meechal Hoffman at Oxford University Press for their patient guidance during the publication process. Finally, I would like to thank Carol Hoke for such ex- cellent work in the editing of the manuscript, editing which so many of the contributors to thisvolumewent out of their way to praise. Contents Contributors,xi Introduction:Teaching Religionand Film Gregory J.Watkins, 3 PART I EstablishingShot: Viewing theField of Religion and Film 1. WhatAreWe TeachingWhenWe Teach ‘‘Religionand Film’’? William L.Blizek and Michele Desmarais, 17 2. TeachingReligion andFilm: A Fourth Approach Conrad Ostwalt, 35 PART II Filmand theTeaching of Religious Traditions 3. Teaching Biblical Tourism:How Sword-and-Sandal Films Clouded My Vision Alice Bach,57 4. Designing aCourseon Religion andCinema in India Gayatri Chatterjee, 77 5. Buddhism, Film, and Religious Knowing: Challengingthe Literary Approachto Film Francisca Cho, 117 6. ThePedagogical Challenges of FindingChristFigures in Film Christopher Deacy, 129 7. Film and theIntroduction to Islam Course Amir Hussain,141