Welcome to Philosophy & Film!

Get ready to have your thoughts challenged regarding the nature of identity, how much control we have in our lives, justice, compassion, happiness, cruelty, why evil exists, and many more topics that have confounded humanity for thousands of years. This course should help you grow and understand both the nature of our world and yourself. We hope you will be fascinated by the journey; once you start contemplating these issues, you’ll find it is hard to stop!

Philosophy & Film will require you to read a variety of texts and analyze several films (both for the philosophical concepts explored within and for the film-making techniques). More importantly, you must be active and engaged in class discussion and in a wide- range of writing assignments. You can expect a number of projects (some solo, some group) like essays, making presentations, making short films, etc. You will also be tested over your understanding of the philosophical concepts we study.

We encourage you to do some reading and/or watching in order to prepare for the course. The more work you do this summer, the easier the class will seem in the fall.

Philosophical books you may enjoy reading: ● Never Let Me Go by Kasuo Ishiguro. ● Logicomix by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou (a graphic novel) ● The Watchmen by Alan Moore (a graphic novel)

Movies you may enjoy watching (G, PG, PG- Movies you may enjoy watching 13) (R)

● Minority Report ● Crash ● Inception ● Thelma & Louise ● The Prestige ● Se7en ● Citizen Kane ● The Siege ● Crimes and Misdemeanors ● Memento ● Casablanca ● Blade Runner ● Zootopia ● The Matrix ● Kung Fu Panda 3 ● Total Recall (1990) ● Oblivion ● V for Vendetta ● The Truman Show ● Her ● The Seventh Seal ● Synecdoche, NY ● The Dark Knight ● Alien ● Lord of the Flies ● Alien Resurrection ● Moon Sincerely, Mr. Ryan Ebling & Mr. Craig Schmidt