Race and the City in Film

Catalog description

Films are a popular mode of discourse in our globalized society. We have all grown up watching films or at least familiar with the concept of cinema as entertainment. Yet, films do more than entertain. Our understanding of our world is mediated in part, through cinematic representations. In this class we analyze how films have represented and negotiated meanings of 'race' in cities at various historical moments. Also, through representations of cities in film, we can also understand in addition to race how class, gender, sexuality, and ability representations throughout the twentieth century and into the early twenty-first are mediated, coded, read, and resisted. In this course, we will view films in which the city, or ideas about the `urban' play an important role in understanding contemporary issues. We will watch films from the 1920s to the contemporary moment from various film genres. We will focus on several themes as we read and understand the 'racialized city' such as urban form.