Contribution to Book
Understanding Context, Resisting Hermeneutics: Critical Pedagogy and Transnational Cinema
Teaching Transnational Cinema: Politics and Pedagogy
(2016)
Abstract
Following Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy, this article argues for an approach to teaching transnational media that balances contextual knowledge and student discovery. While transnational media often presents students with an unfamiliar context, in providing this context teachers of transnational media run the risk of falling into Freire’s ‘banking model’ of education, whereby the instructor fills the student with the proper reading of the film and restricts their critical potential. Instead, the authors advocate presenting films as ‘codifications,’ sketches of a particular place-time that allow students to actively ‘read the world.’ To provide an effective codification, however, the instructor must actively balance accessibility with the potential for student discovery. By adding in new information and critical perspectives as students progress through the material, their previous knowledge can be validated as they make further connections, but also challenged by new ideas that may not sync with their previous understanding. The process of “decoding” that occurs here illustrates the unique potential of transnational media’s ability to encourage the development of a critical consciousness.
Keywords
- transnational cinema
Disciplines
Publication Date
March 10, 2016
Editor
Katarzyna Marciniak, Bruce Bennett
Publisher
Routledge
Series
AFI Film Readers
ISBN
9781317401063
Citation Information
Matthew A. Holtmeier and Chelsea Wessels. "Understanding Context, Resisting Hermeneutics: Critical Pedagogy and Transnational Cinema" 1New YorkTeaching Transnational Cinema: Politics and Pedagogy (2016) p. 78 - 95 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/matthew-holtmeier/45/