Lived Practice of Catholicism in the U.S.
(032:054) Instructor: Heather Hartel

Syllabus
Policies & Requirements
Class Schedule
Assigned Weekly Readings

Assignments
Presentations
Book/Movie Review
Field Report
Final Paper

Here is a list of movies and books that might give you a starting point for your review.

Description
As part of your final portfolio you will be including a 2-4 page movie or book review, and you might choose to give an oral report on this. The key word here is review, which means that you will be expected to judge whether a material is good, bad etc. based on some kind of criteria.The movie review should include two or three movies that have something to do with Catholicism, preferably American films, but there are some excellent films from other countries that could be included. The movies should be related, somehow. The book review will include two books, preferably academic books on Catholic religious practices or history of Catholicism in the U.S., but please talk to me if you want to do popular press or devotional books as I see no reason why these should not be included in this course.

If you have a specific interest that you are having trouble finding information on, please ask me and I'll see if I can recommend a place to start. Ideally, whatever films or books you choose should have common themes. For instance, for a film review you might choose the movies Priest and The Third Miracle to talk about vocation and temptation. If you choose to do the book review, you could look at Thomas Tweed's Our Lady of Charity and Robert Orsi's  Madonna of 115th Street to talk about Marian devotion and ethnicity in the U.S. Or you could look at two books by Thomas Merton and further discuss contemplation. Or you could look at two popular press instruction/guidance books on personal spirituality and compare their approaches.

Requirements
Write an organized short essay that is guided by the following questions. Your goal is to provide some insight and commentary on the materials. Do not just answer these questions in a list of paragraphs; there should be some coherence to your presentation. Also, please avoid excessive summarizing. I am not as interested in the specific content of the books or movies you chose as I am in seeing your analysis of them. In fact, there is really no need to provide any summary of the books or movies other than a brief sentence or two identifying their topics and main arguments or themes.

Questions to keep in mind:

1. What are my criteria for judging these materials? In other words, is a good book something that is entertaining and informative? Is it something that is well written? Is a good movie something that reinforces Catholic beliefs or questions them? Is a poor movie something that does not develop sympathy for the characters? Your criteria are up to you, and you don't even have to explicitly state them. Just make sure you are making a judgment call in your paper. Every time you make a judgment call you are basing that judgment on something; you should know what that something is.
2. What approaches to their topics do the materials take? How do you know this?
3. How are the items you selected similar or different from each other in their content, points of view, strategies etc.?
4. How might one of these help in the understanding of another?
5. Are these good, bad, adequate, poorly produced, well produced etc. materials & why? Is one better than the other & why?

Evaluation

You will be graded on the following criteria:

1) Consultation: Did you email me some idea of what you would be reviewing for feedback before April 13th. (1 point)

2) Organization, Clarity & Concision: Have you been able to organize your ideas, present them in a clear manner and with concision? Have you avoided unnecessary highly detailed summarization and concisely expressed the main ideas of the materials you are examining? (5 points)

3) Comparisons, Contrasts & Inter-relatedness: Have you shown how the materials you have selected are similar and/or different and, if possible,  how they can inform each other through these comparisons? Have you shown how these materials might provide further insight into each other or into one of the themes or issues from the class? (5 points)

4)    Analysis, Commentary & Insight: Have you provided your own point of view on these materials in a balanced manner? In other words, have you made a judgment call on these materials and used evidence from the materials to show why you have made this call? (4 points)