REL 360–our one credit hour course–is hosting its final movie night of the semester! We’ll be viewing two films–one created by one of our own profs, Dr. Suma Ikeuchi. […]
Tag: Matt Bagger
REL 360 Presents: 12 Monkeys
REL 360–our one-credit-hour course–will be showing the 1995 film 12 Monkeys. In the year 2035, only 1% of humanity’s population remains in the aftermath of a deadly virus. James Cole (played by Bruce Willis) is sent back in time to unearth the origin of the virus and thwart it before it can become the deadliest epidemic of his time. […]
REL 360 Presents: The Gods Must Be Crazy
REL 360–our one credit hour course–will be showing the 1980s comedy The Gods Must Be Crazy. After a glass Coca-Cola bottle is thrown from a passing plane into Kalahari bushmen territory, the supposed gift from the gods soon turns the tribe against one another, (since there is only one glass bottle to go around). Xi, the film’s protagonist, takes it upon himself to travel to the ends of the earth to dispose of the ludicrous gift and finds himself in an assortment […]
REL 360 Movie Night: O Brother, Where Art Thou?
REL 360, our one credit hour course, is kicking off the spring semester by showing O Brother, Where Art Thou? The film (which has been compared to Homer’s The Odyssey) is set in the deep South during the Depression-era and follows the antics of three escaped convicts on their quest to avoid the law and return home. […]
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Attention Budding Religious Studies Scholars
Fragonard, A Young Scholar (Wallace Collection) “Thoughts are the precious seeds of which our universities should be the botanical gardens. Beware when God lets loose a thinker on the world—either Carlyle or Emerson said that—for all things then have to rearrange themselves. But the thinkers in their youth are almost always very lonely creatures. ‘Alone the great sun rises and alone spring the great streams.’ The university most worthy of rational admiration is that one in which your lonely thinker […]
REL 360 Presents: Bend it Like Beckham
REL 360–our one credit hour course–will be ending the semester with the film Bend It Like Beckham. The film’s protagonist, Jesminder “Jess” Bhamra, is obsessed with football (more aptly known as soccer in the U.S.), but her fascination with the sport doesn’t align with her parents’ traditional ideas of a young woman’s future. When she joins a soccer team, tensions worsen within her family and she must chose between following her parents’ wishes or pursuing her passion. […]
REL 360 Presents Lilies of the Field
REL 360–our one credit hour course–is hosting yet another movie night! To follow this semester’s theme on Democracy, Race, and Religion, the course will be screening Lilies of the Field. The 1963 film focuses on Homer Smith (also known affectionately as Schmidt) who stops for water in a small farm in Arizona and ends up drawn into a lengthy endeavor by Mother Maria and her fellow nuns to build a church for the impoverished community. What begins as a battle of biblical quotes […]
Enlightening or Entertaining: Kumaré
By Vincent M. Hills Vincent M. Hills is a now graduate of the University of Alabama who majored in History with a minor in Religious Studies. The following was written for REL 360: Popular Culture/Public Humanities. Kumaré is a very interesting “documentary”, but for many different reasons than most documentaries. The film did not wow viewers with interesting facts or show picturesque landscapes, it did however show a side of Western culture that is often the brunt of criticism from many […]
Halleluja! REL Movie Nights are back!
REL 360–our one credit course–is hosting its first movie night of the spring semester. We will be showing Halleluja by King Vidor. The movie–released in 1929 and the first to attempt to portray a non-stereotypical view of African American life–follows Zeke, the young male protagonist, as he breaks away from a life of sharecropping to become a minister, only to throw away his new lifestyle in order to reconnect with an old flame, and this is where the trouble truly starts. […]
REL 360 Showing Kumare: The True Story of a False Prophet
In this fourth and final installment of REL 360‘s semester-long movie screenings, we’ll be following American filmmaker Vikram Gandhi as he enacts a social experiment in the hopes of revealing the irrationality of blind faith. Impersonating an Indian guru, he travels through Arizona gathering followers from all walks of life. Though designed to exhibit the absurdity of blind faith, his experiment may reveal greater spiritual truths than he had set out to unearth. In order to learn what he discovers about human nature, you’ll […]
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