Abstract
Many sociology instructors use video clips to visually illustrate sociological concepts with the goals of further engaging students, breaking up lectures, and drawing in those students who might not otherwise respond to the course content. But finding and successfully integrating video clips into the classroom can be a laborious process. The time it takes to find just the right clip and determine how best to integrate it into lecture or classroom discussion can deter even the most motivated instructors from making video a central feature of classroom pedagogy.
If you ever have taken on the time-consuming task of finding and integrating video clips into your sociology classes, you will especially appreciate The Sociological Cinema Web site. In fact, you may feel like you’ve hit the jackpot. Users will be struck by this Web site’s simple yet thoughtful design, which is clearly intended to help instructors incorporate videos into their classes.
The home page includes links to videos, a blog, teaching resources, and more. The “video” link leads to a searchable database of 235 (and growing) video clips, each tagged and organized according to 48 sociological themes that include “capitalism,” “class,” “gender,” “historical sociology,” “social psychology,” and “Weber.” The video clips are also tagged by length—from less than 5 minutes to 60 minutes. Perhaps most useful, each video clip is accompanied by a summary that places it in sociological context. For example, one clip promotes fair-trade coffee with the suggestion that it be paired with Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism. Instructors can easily build on or deviate from the recommendations by adding their own twists to serve the particular needs of a course.
The Sociological Cinema also posts interactive blogs offering commentary, video recommendations, and research related to the efficacy of using film, multimedia, and other visual aids. As one example, the blog titled The Commercials of Super Bowl Sunday and the New Masculinity includes a discussion of representations of masculinity in popular media that incorporates links to relevant Super Bowl ads, to Messner and de Oca’s (2005) article “The Male Consumer as Loser: Beer and Liquor Ads in Mega Sports Media Events,” and to a 10-minute excerpt from the Katz’s (Jhally 1999) documentary, Tough Guise.
A third notable resource is the “Video of the Week,” prominently displayed on the home page. At the time of this writing, the highlighted video was an ad for the iPad featuring four Apple employees, all of whom are men. Notable for the absence of women, this clip is recommended for teaching sociology of gender to show how excluding women supports a message that there is a natural affinity between male logic and technological innovation. The following point is raised: Do the marketers know that including a woman might send the message that iPad’s programming is logically flawed?
The Sociological Cinema Web site was launched in September 2010 by a team of three graduate students in the PhD program at the University of Maryland—Valerie Chepp, Paul Dean, and Lester Andrist. On the “About Us” page, they describe themselves as the editors and publishers, but their roles are clearly larger. Together they contribute at least 50 percent of the video entries and blogs. The idea to create this resource came to them after several conversations in which they shared their positive experiences using video clips in the classroom. The three committed themselves to creating The Sociological Cinema, and the depth of their commitment is evident. Their ultimate vision is to create a web site that is supported by a community of sociologists who share their most effective videos with one another. They have designed the site to encourage and facilitate dialogue and sharing by incorporating links to Facebook and e-mail in addition to other ways to spread the word about video clips. They even have a Twitter account. Most important, they allow instructors to upload videos and offer clear submission guidelines. Taken together, these communication tools make the web site well positioned to reach an online sociological community.
Instructors who teach just about any sociology course will more than likely find useful videos on this Web site. Certainly anyone who teaches Introduction to Sociology and Social Problems will find dozens of video clips to illustrate key concepts and theories. 1 Well chosen and thoughtful video clips such as those posted on The Sociological Cinema offer students concrete evidence that the language of sociology can actually help them to frame and explain human interactions and activity. 2 When video clips are treated as visual representations of human-created realities, this pedagogical approach is grounded in observation and verification, core principles of the scientific method. As social scientists, we must show that what we say actually exists in the world. In this sense, video clips are a form of documentation. In fact, we can argue that when instructors use videos, they put the sociological vision of reality to the ultimate test—they ask all who are watching to verify that they too observe sociological interpretations of realities.
Often, instructors who use visual materials are criticized for catering to the whims of visual learners and for perpetuating the culture of the net generation, whose members seem to understand the world not through written text but through YouTube and other visual media. Our experiences using well-chosen video clips in the classroom suggest that students actually gain an appreciation for the sociological language because it helps them to make sense of the barrage of visual images they face daily. Using videos that correspond with and illustrate textual material sends the clear message that taking the time to read and learn the vocabulary of sociology pays off. In addition, the vocabulary and perspective of sociology allow them to be critical of messages perpetrated by advertisers, corporations, and other creators of popular culture.
There is no doubt in our minds that Chepp, Dean, and Andrist have given the sociological community an invaluable tool for realizing the purposes outlined above. While we hope we have done justice to the value and strengths of this Web site, there are some weaknesses we consider minor. The Sociological Cinema Web site offers examples of assignments that incorporate visual materials, and currently there are six posted. Our guess is that this feature is in the embryonic stage. Of course, with any online video, there is the possibility of Internet instability. Instructors face the risk that when it comes time to show a chosen video clip in class, the link will be broken, the Web site hosting it will be down, or a chosen clip will have been removed. However, over the course of reviewing and using this Web site, we encountered no such problems.
The intellectual pleasure these three graduate students seem to derive from their collaboration is inexplicably evident in the Web site’s design and spirit—more specifically in the way Chepp, Dean, and Andrist present their relationship and themselves as individuals, the freshness with which they write about pedagogical issues, and the underlying excitement that shows through in each video posting. After spending many hours browsing this site, we could not help but celebrate such collaboration, collegiality, and generosity of spirit that remain rare in sociology and academia.