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- Academic Video Online This link opens in a new window Academic Video Online delivers more than 67,000 titles spanning a range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. It includes documentaries, films, demonstrations, and other content types. Films in the Boston University Libraries catalog are licensed to Boston University for educational and research use only, for BU students, faculty, and staff.
- BU Libraries Search (BULS) This link opens in a new window BU Libraries Search provides a single place to search for a wide variety of academic material provided by the library. The material covered by the search includes books, journals, scores, video and audio recordings, and other physical items held by the library. The search also covers ebooks and ejournals owned by the library, as well as online material provided by the library from a variety of sources.
- Ethnographic Video Online, Volume I-II: Foundational Films This link opens in a new window Ethnographic Video Online, Vol. I-II: Foundational Films contains classic and contemporary ethnographies, documentaries and shorts from every continent, providing teachers visual support to introduce and contextualize hundreds of cultural groups and practices around the world.
Featured Films
- Crash Course Sociology: Stages of Family Life (Streaming, Academic Video Online) One way of thinking about family life says that there are stages that families move through: courtship, marriage, child-rearing, and family life in your later years. We'll also discuss changing patterns of marriage and childbearing in the US, highlighting some of the varied family types that exist.
- Crash Course Sociology: Theories about Family & Marriage (Streaming, Academic Video Online) Today we'll explore how sociology defines family and the different terms used to describe specific types of family. We'll look at marriage in different societies, as well as marital residential patterns and patterns of descent. And, of course, we'll go over the three sociological schools of thought on the societal role of marriage and family.
- Yellow Tale Blues: Two American Families (streaming, Academic Video Online) The producers of Who Killed Vincent Chin? turned the camera on their own families to make this innovative documentary on ethnic stereotypes. Clips from Hollywood movies, from a vintage silent film to Breakfast at Tiffany's, reveal nearly a century of disparaging images of Asians.
- Two American Families (streaming, Academic Video Online) Since 1992, Bill Moyers has been following the story of two ordinary, hard-working families in Milwaukee -- one black, one white -- as they battle to keep from sliding into poverty. A remarkable portrait of perseverance, Two American Families raises unsettling questions about the changing nature of the U.S. economy and the fate of a declining middle class.
- We Are Family (streaming, Academic Video online) This segment of Sunday Morning is about new types of American families.
- Remote control : children, media consumption & the changing American family (streaming, Academic Video Online) The average American child spends over 40 hours per week consuming media, the equivalent of a full-time job. This means that by the time children born today turn 30, they will have spent an entire decade of their lives in front of some type of screen.
- Our Families, Our Future (streaming, Academic Video Online) Our Families, Our Future is a portrait of the American family in crisis. The "traditional" American family has changed dramatically over the past 30 years, as half of marriages now end in divorce and 70 percent of the children spend part of their childhood in a single-parent household.
- A family portrait (streaming, Academic Video Online) Following a gay couple raising children, this film explores the definition of family in 21st-century America. It examines the meaning of love, discusses social expectations surrounding families, and considers societal challenges facing gay couples.
- twixters (streaming Ethnographic Video) twixters illustrates the lives of three young adults in southern California who have moved back in with their parents. Gloria, Josh, and Michael all moved out of their childhood homes in their teenage years. After struggling to find a place in the adult world, they would eventually return home in order to figure out their next move.
- Changing Families (streaming, Academic Video Online) This lesson looks at the American family in the 21st century and the notion that there is no single, 'one-size-fits-all' model of what constitutes a family.
- Family Pictures USA (streaming, Academic Video Online) Join host Thomas Allen Harris to explore American cities, towns and rural communities through the lens of the family photo album, unearthing rich personal stories that expand our understanding of history, diversity and common values.
- Seen Also in Men (streaming, Academic Video Online) A documentary about the paternal instinct three fathers hold that pushes them to fight for meaningful relationships with their children. Under the weight of broken relationships with their own fathers, the negative stereotypes of what a black father does not do, and the injustices in the family court system towards willing fathers; these men rise to the occasion for the love they've felt since they knew their children were on the way.
