Spring 2015/Fuller Live!
Pasadena and Peachtree
TC533
Callaway
TC533: THEOLOGY AND TELEVISION: COMMUNICATING THE GOSPEL IN A MEDIATED WORLD OF TECHNO-CULTURAL CHANGE (4 Units: 161 hours). Kutter Callaway.
DESCRIPTION: This course will consider a theology of culture by focusing on one of the most pervasive cultural forms in the Western world: Television. It will engage the technologies, narratives, ideologies, and ritual practices of hyper-modern culture through the lens of television as a contemporary form of life. The course will provide students with a set of analytical tools for critical understanding and sympathetic engagement with the medium of TV, but it will also address a number of contextual approaches to the medium in order to develop a constructive theology of TV--one that will enable Christian leaders to articulate and demonstrate the Gospel in ways that are meaningful to modern persons inhabiting a mediated world of rapid techno-cultural change.
LEARNING OUTCOMES: Upon successful completion of this course, students will have demonstrated the ability to (1) articulate the relationship between theories and practices for sympathetic engagement and critical understanding of television as a modern technology, a narrative art form, a cultural commodity, and a portal for ritual life; (2) utilize a number of critical tools from the social sciences, aesthetic theory, media ecology, religious studies, and theology for analyzing and understanding the power and meaning of both TV programming and the cultural imagination that it mediates; (3) describe in general terms the history of the relationship between the church and televised media in order to situate their own engagement with media within a larger theological framework; and (4) consider possible theological/apologetic approaches for Gospel demonstration and articulation, with a special emphasis on imagining new ways of collaboratively expressing the Gospel within a hyper-segmented cultural context.
COURSE FORMAT: This course will meet weekly for three-hour sessions for a total of 30 instructional hours (plus 10 DLAs online). Class will include large and small-group discussion, in-depth analyses of particular television shows, lectures, and in-class exercises designed to test the limits and utility of the frameworks developed throughout the course. Television shows will usually be assigned for viewing prior to class along with assigned readings and activities. In addition, students will be required to interact online in discussion forums each week (10 total hours) in order to reflect on these assigned readings as it relates to the assigned TV programming and the supplemental audiovisual media located on the course webpage. Occasional outside resource persons will be utilized.
REQUIRED VIEWING: Students must maintain a subscription to Netflix for the entirety of the quarter. Although access to network broadcast television is recommended, it is not required. All required viewing will be available via Netflix.
Students will watch approximately 30 total hours of television during the quarter, 20 hours of which will be common viewing for the whole class, and 10 of which will be selected according to the student’s research focus.
REQUIRED READING: 1,250 total pages required
All students should read the following books and articles:
Callaway, Kutter and Batali, Dean. Televisionaries: Theology and TV in Dialogue. Baker Academic (Forthcoming) [select chapters of manuscript, approx. 250 pp.].
Jacobs, Jason and Peacock, Steven. Television Aesthetics and Style. Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. ISBN: 978-1441157515, Pub. Price $32.95 [150 pp. assigned].
Johnston, Robert K. God’s Wider Presence: Reconsidering General Revelation. Baker Academic, 2014. ISBN: 978-0801049453, Pub. Price $22.99 [231pp.].
Koyama, Kosuke. Water Buffalo Theology. Orbis Books, 2009. ISBN 978-1570752568, Pub. Price $28.99 [187 pp.].
Winston, Diane, ed. Small Screen, Big Picture: Television and Lived Religion. Baylor University Press, 2009. ISBN: 978-1602581852, Pub. Price $34.99 [250 pp. assigned].
Course Reader: selected chapters including work from Henry Jenkins, Mitchel Stephens, Robert Woods, Barbara Nicolosi, Jana Riess, Michele Rosenthal, Lynn Schofield Clark, Craig Detweiler, Quentin Schultze, and others [approx. 200 pgs.].
ASSIGNMENTS AND ASSESSMENT:
1. Online participation, which includes weekly threaded discussions reflecting on course content (200-300 word min.), and weekly responses to classmates’ posts (100-150 words) (10%). [This assignment is related to learning outcomes #1-4]. [10 hours].
2. Required reading, viewing and journaling on all TV programs (15%). [This assignment is related to learning outcomes #1 and 2]. [7 hours reading/week; 2 hours viewing/week = 90 hours].
3. Two 2-page book reviews of (1) Callaway/Batali and (2) Johnston (10%). [This assignment is related to learning outcomes #1, 2, and 4]. [5 hours].
4. Students will create a small-group discussion guide designed for encouraging Gospel demonstration and articulation based upon a serialized TV program. They will then facilitate a small-group discussion that makes use of these materials. Students will submit both the discussion guide itself and a 2-page reflection on the utility of the resource they have created. The best discussion guides will be published on the TV section of the Reel Spirituality website and made available to others in local ministry contexts (20%). [This assignment is related to learning outcomes #1-4]. [5 hours].
5. “The Writers Room: Collaborative Theology” Assignment. Along with 3 or 4 colleagues, students must select a TV program and create a shared document that describes and assesses the following: (1) The core of the program’s power and meaning, (2) theological strategies for exploring and encouraging Gospel demonstration and articulation among the audience to whom this program is narrow-cast, (3) a proposal for a “televisual” liturgy that might capture the imagination of this particular, hyper-segmented portion of the broader culture (20%). [This assignment is related to learning outcomes #1-4]. [5 hours].
6. A 10-page final project/paper that offers a theological engagement with a seminal TV program or TV series of the student’s choosing. Students will demonstrate their ability to examine or apply the theological theories presented in class by placing their chosen television program into dialogue with the biblical text and theological tradition. Papers will seek to achieve three goals: (1) offer a critical analysis/description of the TV program/series; (2) develop a possible theological and biblical approach for engaging with our contemporary culture as expressed in this television program; (3) reflect upon the ways in which the Gospel might best be articulated and demonstrated within one’s local context (mediated or otherwise) as it is shaped by the broader televisual culture (25%). [This assignment is related to learning outcomes #1-4]. [16 hours].
7. Class Participation [30 hours].
PREREQUISITES: None
RELATIONSHIP TO CURRICULUM: Option to meet the C2, C3 or TH5 in the 120 MDiv Program. Option to count in the Theology and Arts emphasis, Worship and Music Ministry emphasis, Worship, Theology and the Arts emphasis and Youth, Family, and Culture Emphasis.
FINAL EXAMINATION: None.