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What is the promise of documentaries for teaching and changing the world? Is the documentary the new pedagogical model for everyday classrooms? Is the professor of tomorrow not a lecturer or one who uses the Socratic method, forums, discussion boards,…
Continue readingAs a professor, I am caught in the midst of a revolutionary period in education and technology. Education has had a slow building relationship with technology and has even had a love-hate relationship with the use of social media, despite…
Continue readingYears ago I devised a classroom demonstration, to use early in a semester when trying to help students become more aware, first, of the multiple dimensions of religion and, more importantly, of the ways in which diverse analytical lens for…
Continue readingAs a teacher trained in textual analysis and the religious practices of living human communities, the language of images, videos, and recorded sound are not my mother tongue. Yet, I know that for my students, communicating in an era where…
Continue readingIn the first blog of this series (“Nobody Goes to the Cinema to Read the Screenplay”), I noted that I’ve tried to boost my multimedia literacy by becoming a student of the cinema and seeking convergences between filmmaking and homiletics…
Continue readingIn 2015 my wife, Dr. Vanessa Watkins, took a trip with National Geographic to Cuba led by one of their photographers. One of the things I love about National Geographic trips is that the tour leader lectures in the hotel…
Continue readingWhen I met with our first-year students during on-campus orientation five weeks into their program, a student complained to me about an assignment in my online class. I didn’t recognize what the student was describing, and after a few minutes…
Continue readingTeaching theology in the seminary is challenging. Many students, burning with zeal to do the “real work” of ordained ministry, pastoral care, often cannot immediately perceive theology’s role in that endeavor. Its utility for building community, performing diaconal service, celebrating…
Continue readingI learned something this holiday season—my first holiday season as a grandfather. My family traveled from Atlanta, Georgia to Orlando, Florida to surprise my mother, Mrs. Earlene Watkins, on her 80th birthday. The surprise is summed up in this moment….
Continue readingIntroduction to the Series The cinema has become an important means of cultural communication, a contemporary language in need of understanding and explication . . . Some even believe that cinema studies is positioned to become the new MBA, a…
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