So I think it's safe to say that this course was one of the easiest courses I've ever taken at Mac. It's also pretty interesting too! I had this class with Dr. Calvert-Koyzis, who's a very friendly and approachable prof. I have a friend who complained about how slow and boring she was with her lectures, but I didn't really notice. Anyway, here are the course objectives from the course outline:
Course Objectives
1. To introduce relevant portions of biblical books.
2. To discuss how to profitably view a film.
3. To introduce students to perceptions of biblical narratives and biblical ideas in
scholarly literature and in films.
4. To consider how an understanding of biblical texts assists us in understanding a variety of films.
5. To consider how an understanding of films can assist us in further understanding biblical texts.
6. To gain a fuller awareness of how filmmakers perceive the Bible and biblical imagery from an analysis of films.
Basically each week we would have to watch a film before class, and in class the professor would discuss how the film related to the Bible. We did have opportunities to discuss the films in tutorial, but I never went since tutorial participation did not count towards our grade. It was 30% midterm, 40% reflection paper, and 30% final exam.
The midterm was
extremely easy, consisting of only multiple choice and fill in the blank questions. She would distribute a list of key terms that you would have to know, and on the exam she would give you the definition and you would have to fill in the correct word from the list. The final exam was the exact same format, except longer and unfortunately a little trickier. I highly recommend going through the readings, as a lot of the questions refer to what specific authors said. Also, she likes to test whether you've watched the movies or not by asking really detailed questions about the film (i.e. What was Forrest Gump's son watching on television when Forrest meets him for the first time?) Here are the films we studied this semester:
Films
1. The Ten Commandments
2. Prince of Egypt
3. The Sixth Sense
4. Fried Green Tomatoes
5. Jesus of Montreal
6. Passion of Christ
7. Da Vinci Code
8. Forrest Gump
9. Shawshank Redemption
10. Armageddon
That's pretty much it. I would recommend this course not only because of its "difficulty" level, but also because it is pretty interesting to see how these Hollywood movies relate to the Bible. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them
