Blake Transfers Love of Litereature to Film Studies

"[My first teaching experience] was at a military school, and I had an honors class to teach Greek to. All these kids were the leaders in the school … and they had swords. I'm here on my first day of teaching, and these kids are all armed," recalls Richard Blake, S.J., a professor in the film studies department and co-director of Boston College's film studies program.

Blake's career has changed drastically since the years he taught Latin and Greek to young adolescents at Xavier High School in New York, and only partly because he's no longer lecturing to a group of heavily armed military hopefuls. Instead, Blake is teaching courses at BC, including the sequence on American Film History and Introduction to Film Art, which he particularly enjoys because it enables him to "start students off in their film majors and minors."

In addition to authoring several books and essays, Blake is currently the editor of the quarterly journal Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits and is in the process of brainstorming ideas for his next book.

Blake's own high school experiences and the culture in which he was raised strongly influenced his decision to become a Jesuit and a teacher. Blake was raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., a "cosmopolitan, very heavily Catholic and Irish area that might as well have been a section of Boston."

At Brooklyn Prep, Blake's high school, he was surrounded by Jesuits and "very strong teachers at a very impressionable age" who inspired him to be like them. In the 1950s, entering the religious life was a career option that many boys took seriously, including Blake.

Following high school, Blake received his B.A. and M.A. in English from Fordham University and his Ph.D. in radio, television and film from Northwestern University. In addition, he obtained  his seminary degree in philosophy from Fordham University and Masters in Divinity from Woodstock College. While completing his graduate work in the late 1960s, Blake received a Peabody Award for his role as Charlie Chaplin in the PBS series, Earth Keepers.

 Blake has always had a passion for literature of all kinds, making it natural for him to study English. As he prepared to begin his doctoral work, however, he noted that English was entering a "theoretical, analytical phase" that he did not anticipate with excitement. It was then that he discovered film studies. "It was just a brand new, wide open area that was open for all sorts of creative and innovative work," Blake says.

He began pursuing his interest in film studies at Stanford University but soon transferred to Northwestern University, where the program had grown out of the drama department and focused more on the literary elements of film.

Upon receiving his doctorate, Blake began a 16-year sabbatical as a film critic and associate editor at America Magazine; he eventually rose to become a managing editor and then executive editor. As was the custom for many Jesuits at the time and to this day, Blake embarked on his teaching career, first at Georgetown University, followed by LeMoyne College, where he remained for nine years before making his home in Devlin Hall at BC.

When asked if he possesses any special talents, with a laugh, Blake said survival. "One can imagine the danger of facing 40 19-year olds in a classroom when you realize that every one of them thinks their cell phone is far more interesting than you are," Blake says.

Despite viewing students as dangerous forces in the classroom, Blake recognizes that BC's students and their commitment to academics and spirituality are what make BC a great university. "As a teacher, I am very impressed by the academic standards of the students … and as a priest, I am very impressed by their interest in some of the deeper questions," Blake says. It is these deeper questions that Blake encourages his students to consider, an approach, that he may stress more than other professors because of his role as a Jesuit priest, he says.

In the classroom, Blake is a stickler for literacy and grammar, and he knows that "students go crazy when [he] corrects spelling, grammar, and punctuation." He also insists on the importance of print sources in this world that is dominated by electronics and technology and occasionally takes his classes to BC's libraries to explore some of these long-forgotten sources.

Blake's good-humored demeanor and expertise in his field make him a favorite among many of his students. Wesley Hazzard, BC '06 and evening supervisor in the Media Center, who took several of Blake's classes while an undergraduate student at BC, now sees his former professor in the Media Center, where Blake is a frequent visitor. "He always knows what he wants and when he wants it. When he comes [to the Media Center] he always comes in with a smile," says Hazzard, who along with the rest of the Media Center staff, always looks forward to assisting Blake.

When outside of the classroom, Blake insists that he is not very different than the rest of the world. In the very little spare time that he has, Blake likes to "read, walk, and waste time with the computer and the television like everybody else."

 Blake, however,  is not like everybody else. He is a man, both a professor and a priest, whose cheerful disposition and modesty coupled with his intelligence and passion for film and literature, characterize him as a unique individual.