The genesis for the “Disney, Fairy Tales, and Feminist Theory” class actually started in Summer 2012 when Jev Forsberg (Master of Divinity, ‘12) and I co-taught, “Cultural Exegesis: Pop Culture and the Kingdom” with Dr. Derek McNeil. That was the summer I really noticed a boom in fairy tale film and TV adaptations, especially revision-minded fairy tales attempting to address problematic issues around how female fairy tale heroines (mostly princesses) were portrayed. That year we had Snow White and the Huntsman, Mirror, Mirror, as well as the first seasons of ABC/Disney’s Once Upon a Time and NBC’s Grimm.

In that class, we encouraged some students to explore these retold fairy tales for their final projects that summer, but I kept pursuing my own questions on the subject, a path which took me to Reykjavik, Iceland three summers later for an academic conference where I compared the themes of patriarchal curses within recent film adaptations of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. While I still begrudgingly give credit to the popularity of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight Saga for this renaissance in atmospheric fairy tale retellings (2011’s Red Riding Hood directed by Catherine Hardwicke par exemple), there are more connections to fairy tales in contemporary culture that I wanted to explore.

With the opportunity to teach another Theological and Cultural Engagement elective class this summer, I saw a chance to explore the intersections of two powerful cultural influencers—fairy tales and the Walt Disney corporation—as an introduction to applying feminist critical theory to cultural texts. There are a lot of myths and misunderstandings about fairy tales, both about how they’ve been passed down and how they’ve changed over time, but the point of the class wasn’t to become folklore masters. Rather, it was a chance for us to examine together the seen and unseen ways that stories can shape our sense of identity, agency, and community. Paying attention to a certain genre of story or tale type provides a specific lens on how different cultures communicate about themselves, but it can also help us think about the translation, adaptation, and interpretive traditions surrounding other texts, such as scripture.

“It was a chance for us to examine together the seen and unseen ways that stories can shape our sense of identity, agency, and community.”

I definitely wanted to provide some analytical tools to help unpack the messages that global influencers like Walt Disney have been telling us about what it means to be male, female, young, old, beautiful, monstrous, powerful, or vulnerable, but I also wanted the class to be a space to explore the potency and pleasure of hearing a story you already know being told anew. There is a reason (more than one) that fairy tales continue to be told, retold, adapted, and rewritten, and much of that lies in the fact that the stories are allowed to change. Those in search of the “true” Cinderella or the un-Grimmed Sleeping Beauty or non-Disneyized Snow White will inevitably be frustrated; arguably, it’s not about finding the “right” version, but about continuing to find new insights and possibilities in how a story might be re-imagined or re-contextualized, and what we might learn about ourselves in the process.

Although the Disney versions may be the default fairy tale versions for most of us, the Grimms were doing just as much cultural editing and adapting a century earlier for their German readers as did Disney for his 20th century movie-goers. What might we learn by paying attention to the patterns, the values, the assumptions, and the aspirations embedded in the stories we keep re-telling, particularly when those stories are largely directed towards children? The central question of the class was “Why are we telling these stories?,” and for the last day of class, we held a “Fairy Tale Festival” around this theme. It was three parts mini-academic conference, creative workshop, and storytelling circle. Students had a number of options for their final projects, but whether they wrote a research paper, composed a new fairy tale, or workshopped a screenplay, they had to present it to their classmates. It was four hours that included everything from comparative film analysis to a litany for women wounded within fairy tales. It was pretty magical.

I hope that by spending time not just with some of the histories of how these tales have been translated and transmitted, but also with the ways they have been critiqued, celebrated, and questioned, that students were able to find fruitful connections to their own vocational concerns and formational perspectives. I definitely learned a ton (and went joyously overboard composing bespoke fairy tale playlists each week).

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Before we dive in and talk about this class, can you tell us a bit about your history with ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ”?
I started here working on the two-year degree—what used to be the MA in Christian Studies and is now the . My whole background and training was in theater and dramaturgy, but through classes like Reading Practices and Old Testament, it was a slippery slope into taking Biblical Greek and Hebrew, and realizing that academia was where I could be most creative. My dream of doing a Ph.D. and working in higher education doing interdisciplinary theology was born out of this place. After graduating, my two years as an Assistant Instructor were kind of a testing ground to see if I actually want to do that for my career, and it felt like roller skating—it felt so right and good, like all parts of me were firing on all cylinders.

Now, after four years in Scotland, what’s it like being back in Seattle?
Living in St. Andrews and Edinburgh, which are both very international and historical places, it really reframed a lot, helping me see my American identity in a new way. I lived through the Scottish referendum, the Brexit vote, and now I am very thankful to be back in North America. It’s been quite difficult being across an ocean with what’s happening in this country.

Moving to Scotland, I very much felt sent by ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ” to do the Ph.D. In a spiritual sense, I felt like there was a community sending me forward to my next step. And I never stopped wanting to come back—nothing sounded better than coming back to Seattle. In terms of an academic institution, I can’t think of any place where the ethos, the values, the leadership, our vision for what we want to put in the world, how we want to be changed by our students—I don’t see anywhere else like that. ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ” is my benchmark for what a school could be.

This year you’ve been teaching the Writing Workshop and supervising the Assistant Instructors. Then there’s this class, Spirituality and the Arts, coming in the Spring. What’s it all about?
This class, taught every other year, is a continually evolving elective as our school’s engagement with different aspects of spirituality and culture continues to shape. In the previous two versions we had adjuncts who had different theological and artistic backgrounds—one year it was literature, one year it was iconography. There are a lot of outstanding, creative electives about spirituality and the arts this spring, and I needed to find an anchor. Through the process of research, film just kept popping up as I realized, where do I do much of my meaning-making? Where have I heard God in a very clear way? Where could I hit the ground running?

In terms of thinking about meaning-making through art, it’s far more likely that a lot of us have films that have journeyed with us since childhood and have changed as we’ve grown. We can be film literate at a very early age, even before we can be book literate, in a way that we might not be able to with other art forms.

The goal is not a theologically concept-heavy class. It will be more experiential, a class for movie lovers. In many ways it’s about the spirituality of movie watching more than it is the spirituality of movies. So if students are curious about how much they need to know about film, I’d say nothing. If you enjoy watching movies, this might be an interesting entry point for engaging a practice you are already engaged in but might not have considered from a spiritual formation perspective.

How will the class be structured?
Students will watch about a movie a week outside of class, and that’s part of the reading. I really want students to sit down and watch on as big a screen as possible. This should not be catching 30 minutes here and there on your tablet. The library staff is hoping to offer on-campus screenings, and I’m trying to make use of our amazing film library here at ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ”. I don’t know if people realize what a masterful gift we have in . Our library’s got film game, big time.

The main spiritual focus of the course is going to be around general revelation: what do we know, what do we say, what can we identify about how God reveals Godself beyond church and tradition and Scripture? I think it comes up in quite a few of our courses, the concept that it is not just through reading the Bible, or hearing a sermon, or taking the Eucharist that the presence of God and the spirit of God speak. From a personal standpoint, often a movie theater has historically been a sacred space for me—far more than most church experiences I’ve had. What happens if we don’t ignore that or treat it as a one-time thing? If that is a way God chooses to speak to us, how might we listen better if we acknowledge it? The hope of the class is to think through how we are being spiritually formed all the time. What I’m presenting isn’t new, it’s something we hear a lot here. This is a particular way to think about it.

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