Seminars

OX-09 and CAM-09 ~ “P.O.V. (Persistence of Vision): Popular Art, Culture and Industry” with Bill Romanowski

This seminar focuses on the intersection of film as popular art, culture and industry. How do films express meaning? How do viewers understand movies? Romanowski shows how meaning-making occurs through viewer engagement with character, story and the film’s audiovisual design. Looking at the film itself is key to understanding the perspective it represents on the human condition and the world. As popular art, movies communicate and criticize cultural values, provide social unity and contribute to our collective memory. Making sense of a film, i.e., exploring its meaning, involves perspective (whether social or religious) and various interpretive strategies on the part of the viewer. And most movies are also products of a profit-driven commercial enterprise. What affect might this have on their creation and reception? Using lots of video illustrations, this seminar explores the cinema in this crucible of entangled concerns.

Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Calvin College, William D. Romanowski, Ph.D. (Bowling Green State University) teaches courses in film, communication and culture studies. Critics commended his book, Pop Culture Wars: Religion and the Role of Entertainment in American Life as “remarkably balanced" and "a stunning portrait of the interplay of religion and popular culture.” Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture received the 2002 ECPA Gold Medallion Award (Christianity and Society) and was praised as “a work of a passionate imagination and incisive intellect” and “a lively and much needed Christian perspective on the popular arts.”

 

 

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