Volume 17, Issue 1, Spring 2017
Wanda Teays
Pages 115-126
Show Me a Class That’s Got a Good Movie, Show Me
Teaching Ethics through Film
In this essay I offer some suggestions for integrating film in an Ethics classes and reaching your goals in terms of learning and student outcomes. You can easily adapt them to other areas of Philosophy— not just Ethics. Starting with Aristotle’s Poetics as a tool for deconstructing movies, I set out five strategies for teaching Ethics through film: start with a film or ethical theory; start with a real-world case or an ethics code; then use any of these four in combination to allow for a more in-depth analysis. Each strategy is discussed with example exercises to illustrate how this approach can create an engaging class while achieving your goals.