Using Feature Films to Teach Poverty
Abstract College students, who often have little experience with persons living below the poverty line, can ignore or misunderstand the experience of poverty. Feature film is one way to illustrate poverty in educational settings. Through identifying with a character, students may gain insights into the daily issues related to poverty. This article presents a review of the literature of using film to teach social science. Six specific films for teaching poverty are presented.
Teaching the Sociology of Popular Music with the Help of Feature Films: A Selected and Annotated Videography.
According to Gordon and Nachbar (1980), courses in popular culture are increasingly becoming a mainstay of college and university curricula. The results of their survey of 260 four-year institutions revealed 1,993 popular culture courses with an enrollment of 48,468 students. Despite the wide variety of topics that fall under the heading of popular culture and the large number of departments that offer popular culture courses (Mukerji and Schudson 1986), sociology offered the third largest number of courses that qualified as classes in popular culture. In offerings and enrollments, courses on popular music were outranked only by introductions to popular culture and by film courses. Rather than focusing on courses on or about film (e.g., the sociology of film or the history of cinema), my interest lies in the use of films for courses on popular culture, particularly courses on the sociology of popular music. Although instructional films are valuable teaching aids (Burton 1988, p. 263), writers increasingly are using Hollywood or feature films. Feature films have been used to teach social problems (e.g., Dressel 1990; Hannon and Marullo 1988), sociological theory (e.g., Fails 1988), medical sociology (e.g., Pescosolido 1990), and a host of topics in introductory sociology, such as socialization, deviant behavior, religion, and social class (Burton 1988; Smith 1973). Feature films also have been used as a university service to connect university faculty members with community members (e.g., Prendergast 1986). Why has there been such a sudden interest in the classroom use of feature films? Pescosolido (1990, p. 337) states that despite our ideological and pedagogical differences, we, as teachers of sociology in higher education, probably could agree that two of our overriding goals are to show the relevance of sociology to students' lives and to show them
Using Films Based on Literature in Teaching Psychology
The Red Badge of Courage. 1951, M-G-M, 69 rnin., black and white. Rental from Films, Inc., 1144 Wilmette Ave., Wilmette, IL 60091, $45.00. Twelve Angry Men. 1957, United Artists, 95 min., blackand white. Rental from United Artists, 729 7th Ave., New York, NY 10019, $1 25.00. Lordof the Flies. 1963, Sterling, 90 rnin., blackand white. Rental from Audio Brandon Films, 8400 Brookfield Ave., Brookfield, IL 60513, $100.00. Silent Snow, Secret Snow. 1964, Macmillan Films, 17 rnin., blackand white. Rental from lndiana University Audio-Visual Center, Bloomington, IN 47401, $7.25. The Lottery. 1969, Encyclopaedia Britannica Educational Corp., 18 min., color. Rental from lndiana University Audio-Visual Center, Bloomington, IN 47401, $10.25.