Sr. Liz Thoman, long time advocate of media education, spoke with me often about her joy in doing photography as a spiritual practice. It is lovely to see that Eileen Crowley has extended this idea and developed a website to help people engage photography through this lens.
Dr. Eileen Crowley, professor at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, has created a lovely website on “storytelling as ministry” in which she shares pragmatic resources and lovely examples.
The McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame has a regular podcast featuring “stories of grace” which are often quirky and interesting stories fro specific contexts which are aimed at “nourishing Catholic imagination.” It’s fun to listen to these stories, many of which are by undergraduates at ND. You can access …
This essay is a powerful illustration of what is possible when we allow ourselves to live in wonder and curiosity, to approach other stories with an open mind, and to hold our own stories with a degree of humility that makes learning possible. I’m making it a practice to collect stories from my more conservative …
Here’s yet another Redglass Pictures short film, this one focused on how stories fund political campaigns. It’s absolutely fascinating to hear this political strategist talk about the story he told that helped get George Bush elected. This story is particularly fascinating given what happened in our most recent election.
Here is another Redglass Pictures film, this one is Ken Burns talking about story — and in it, he talks about how stories tell truths, and yet also manipulate.
Redglass Pictures is a studio that is focused on creating short, compelling films. This is one in which novelist George Saunders talks about what’s involved in creating a story — and how it brings us to truth. George Saunders: On Story from Redglass Pictures on Vimeo.
Three new resources that I find particularly powerful in media education are the following: the 2017 issue focused on “Agency” of the Journal of Media Literacy (available for free) Sonja Vivienne’s book, Digital Identity and Everyday Activism: Sharing Private Stories with Networked Publics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) Henry Jenkins’ book, By Any Media Necessary: the New Activism …
I frequently invite people — in my classes, in church settings — to do theological reflection using commercials. Patricia O’Connell Killen long ago published a lovely book with an excellent process in it for more general theological reflection, which I have adapted. You can download my handout, based on her book. And here are some …
While it is not a digital storytelling site, per se, the Historyapolis site in Minneapolis combines photographs from various archives with blog posts offering more information about the stories from the photos. It’s a really interesting and innovative use of historical documents woven into a set of stories for the purposes of creating engagement with …