Proactive Ministry in a Media Culture
EL4515 / Spring 2008
Mondays beginning 11 February
6 to 9pm in NW231
Schedule . Info . Texts . Goals . Requirements . Blogging . How-To's . Resources
2/11 . 2/18 . 2/25 . 3/3 . 3/10 . 3/17 . 3/31 . 4/7 . 4/14 . 4/21 . 4/28 . 5/5 . 5/12 .
7 April 2008 / Deepening Our Analysis
This evening we’re going to continue our analysis, looking more specifically at some of the ways in which race is constructed in popular media.
Update: Instead of engaging the film Crash, we're going to take this time to look at a very recent issue, the controversy over Jeremiah Wright's sermon, and Barack Obama's response to that controversy.
Towards that end, here are a variety of additional things you might want to consider:
A collection of big newspaper responses (that is, the mega media)
Christian Scharen's discussion of the Obama's speech and Niebuhr's theology
Brian McClaren's study guide on the speech
Jim Wallis and Jimmy Carter on the Obama speech
Interview with Rev. Dr. McClain about the speech
Rhetorical analysis of King's speech and Obama's speech
A range of pieces Fernando'sDesk put together on the speech
David Troutt's op-ed on the speech
A round-robin blog discussion up at TPMCafe
Powerline blog (a conservative blog) comments on the speech both here and here
Rush Limbaugh's take on the speech
Other conservative reactions to the speech
Left-wing commentary on the speech
More general information on racism:
Archbishop Flynn's pastoral letter on racism
Dialogue helps
Talking Together as Christians about Tough Social Issues (ELCA guide)
ELCA Ground Rules for discussion
Catholic Common Ground principles
Public Conversations Project dialogue guides
[I'll leave the original ideas for this session up here, in case you want to return to them at some future point.]
Helpful resources include: Racialicious, Harlow’s Monkey, PracticingOurFaith.org.
Additional reading that you might enjoy:
Aaron, Charles. “Black like them,” in Utne Reader, March-April 1999, pp. 68-73. Originally printed in Spin Magazine, November 1998.
Bass, D. (1997). Practicing Our Faith. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. (Especially the chapter on discernment.)
Nakamura, L. (2002). Cybertypes: Race, ethnicity and identity on the internet. New York: Routledge.