African-American History

Catalog description

(PP,D) Now a subfield of American history, African American history is American history that is "longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it" (James Baldwin). Since most people today learn their history at the movies, this course pays attention to how feature-length films tell the story of the African American past, asking: Has Hollywood got the story of African-American history right? What is the story of African-American history? How does one judge the quality of accounts of the past, whether told by filmmakers or historians?