African American Representation in Media

Catalog description

Three hours lecture per week Media has played and continues to play an important role in our society’s ever-evolving constructions and representations of race, as contextualized in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. For African Americans, at least, media representations often are gender-specific, providing political and social impetus for exaggerated and misrepresented black femininities and masculinities, and function in establishing a hierarchical system of color (pigmentocracy). This course will analyze and critique representations of African Americans in media-newspapers and magazines, film, radio, television, and new media - and explore the juxtaposition of external and internal representations of race and gender. Guiding questions for this course include: What are media representations of African Americans? What are the political and social implications of mass media representations of African Americans? How are these representations internalized by mainstream and black audiences? What is African American media? Who authors African American media?