Course at BYU in Mormons and Film

I've just been approved to teach a course this Winter semester (Jan-April, 2008) in BYU's Theatre and Media Arts department entitled "Mormons and Film: The First Century" (click on image to the left for full-sized flier). The online syllabus can be found here. I'm very excited about this. I'm adapting Randy Astle's syllabus from a few years back, adding to it readings from the special issue of BYU Studies on Mormons and Film that he and I edited for 2007.

There is so little knowledge about the history of Mormons and film, and there are so many interesting and important films (whether by or about Mormons--see the Mormon Literature & Creative Arts database which tallies some 4000 such films). This course will help to promote Mormon cinematic cultural literacy and hopefully spark some good research and criticism about these largely unstudied works.