Based on understandings about conflicts between conservatives and liberals in American life developed in his book Spirit and Flesh (Knopf 2004), Dr. Ault offers consultations designed to help organizations pursue the common good by formulating their approach and message in ways that appeal to citizens across these paralysing divisions in American life and avoid being pidgeon-holed into boxes of relentless misunderstanding and hostility.
Dr. Ault is also prepared to help organizations negotiate and mediate such conflicts within their common life between partisans across these divisions in American life--in local communities, schools, churches, international organizations, etc.
To discuss these possibilities, please contact us at the address below.
We offer consultations to academic institutions about strategies for integrating documentary video producation and higher learning in the age of digital video. (See "Teaching" below.)
To discuss these possibilities please contact us at the address below.
Dr. Ault began his career teaching sociology at Smith College (including Urban Sociology, Class and Society, and Social Theory) and has taught ethnographic film at the University of California--San Diego, and, most recently, documentary filmmaking at Calvin College.
Based on his experience producing documentary films and his prior experience in the academy, Dr. Ault has developed a vision for integrating documentary filmmaking in digital video with a higher learning and the needs of academic institutions. For this vision, see his report below: Possibilities for the teaching and practice of documentary video at a midwest college.
For how academic institutions might serve and connect with local communities around them, see Dr. Ault's ongoing project on his own community of Northampton, Massachusetts. Called the Living History Community Heritage Project, and funded by the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, this project is the kind of thing that might be done in and through a relatively inexpensive program for documentary video production at a local college, university or secondary school. See below: Northampton's Living History Community Heritage Project.
Recently he had opportunity to try out some of these ideas while occupying the Spoelhof Chair for a visiting scholar/teacher at Calvin College where he taught documentary filmmaking in and through projects for the college and the wider community.
"James Ault taught a course on documentary video production at Calvin College and we have seen some remarkable results. Students worked with him on some fascinating topics and saw Ault's masterful approach to human story. They were pushed and stretched and ended up doing far more than they thought they could. Ault's documentary work elicits extraordinarily deep reflection from ordinary people and challenges the way you think about them and their lives. He offers a course in cinema verite, and students discover veritas."
Dr. Joel Carpenter, Provost, Calvin College
Dr. Ault has taught workshops in documentary storytelling with relatively inexpensive digital video production and editing equipment--for instance, among third-world church leaders at the Overseas Ministries Study Center in New Haven, CT.
"Dr. James Ault's hands-on workshop on digital videography was gratifyingly practical. His expertise derived from documenting diverse faith communities on several continents-- made him uniquely effective in teaching all aspects of videography to our very eclectic residential community."
Dr. Jonathan Bonk, Executive Director, the Oversears Ministries Study Center
Based on understandings developed in his new book Spirit and Flesh and making use of his award-winning documentary Born Again on the same community, Dr. Ault now offers workshops designed to help groups and organizations understand new right conservatism and fundamentalist Christianity in their own particular settings.