Seminar:

Catalog description

This seminar explores how the trope of ?blackness? is medThis seminar explores how the trope of ?blackness? is mediated over a range of ideas, images, and expressions of social difference in cinema. Screenings and readings examine how popular cinema, ranging from black independence to the commercial ?mainstream,? deals not only with issues of race and color, but how these issues intersect, and interact, with other social categories of difference(s) mainly related to class, sexual orientation, and gender but including many others. The course explores such issues as seeing beyond the ?black-white binary? model of race relations; gendered perspectives on ?blackness? and black women?s filmmaking; the cultural and political dynamic between blackness and gayness on the screen; and issues of class, caste, and ?colorism? in cinema. The course also examines a number of ideas and theories related to the material, including passing, double consciousness, unmarked difference, and creolization.