Instructor Spotlight: DeVante Love

What inspired you to teach this course?

I love travelling and I love movies! I’ve been lucky enough to live in places like China, the US, Egypt, Japan, and Taiwan, doing work as a school counselor. Whenever I met with students, we would fall into lovely conversations about how movies helped them learn life lessons or empowered them during hard times. Movies became a bridge for us into the deeper conversations. I believe that movies (and other artifacts of popular culture more broadly) contain such magic, that they can help us better understand ourselves and grow into who we want to be.

What is one way that movies and television are secretly teaching us to be more intelligent?

Have you ever caught yourself saying “woosah” under your breath when you need to calm down? That phrase actually comes from a black comedy (Bad Boys II, 2003), but it escaped the screen and found its way into everyday life. Now we hear it in songs by artists like Doechii, or even in conversations when things are starting to get heated. What I love is how a silly-sounding movie mantra has quietly become a cultural tool for self-regulation, one of the core pillars of Emotional Intelligence (EQ). Even if people don't know the word “woosah”  it has become so common to tell someone to take a few breaths when they become overwhelmed. It’s something that we see all over popular culture. Underneath it all is actually a link to the Japanese principle of zanshin, which is about finding calm by maintaining presence of breath. So without realizing it, popular culture has given us a way to remind ourselves to breathe, reset, and refocus. That’s one of the reasons I love studying TV and movies: because of the little pieces of wisdom they slip into our lives.

What is your favorite movie that educates while it entertains?

Always a hard question! The big one that I teach is Inside Out (2015), but the most recent one I saw that felt super powerful was The Six Triple Eight (2024). That movie feels like a masterclass in how to stay resilient when people expect so little from you and how to use your life experience in service to something greater than oneself. The movie also inspired me to write more handwritten notes to the people I love.

What’s coming up in your course that you’re particularly excited about?

I just love the conversations we have about the life lessons we learn from the media. I’m really excited for our talk about social intelligence, in which we will dissect The Social Network (2010) and clips from Love is Blind!

DeVante Love is an educator, performance artist, monk, and cultural analyst who bridges psychological theory with popular culture to create transformative learning experiences. They hold a Master’s in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University, where they developed innovative curricula combining media analysis, emotional and spiritual intelligence, film, and dance. Their forthcoming book Netflix and Heal: A Monk’s Guide to Inner Peace Through Movies will soon be available on Amazon. They are currently a PhD student in Theater, Dance and Performance Studies at Tufts.