Slavery, the Civil War, and Cinema

Catalog description

This course provides a general introduction to two very different modes of thinking about race and slavery in the United States between the 1770s and the 1860s. The first half of the class will present historians' interpretations of the lives of slaves, the politics of slavery, and the Civil War. The other half of the class is devoted to examining cinematic and artistic treatments of slavery and the Civil War. Overall, the course will focus on the differences and tensions between historians' methods and ways of knowing about and understanding the world, versus the essential truths that artists try to present in film while focusing on the specifics of slavery and the Civil War in the United States. Rather than privileging one way of knowing over the other, the course will focus on the strengths and limits of each. In addition, the course will examine how collective historical memories concerning race, slavery, and the Civil War are created and contested. The first half of the class offers an historical analysis of the history of slavery in the United States between the American Revolution in the 1770s and the American Civil War in the 1860s. The second part of the class will focus on cinematic presentations of slavery and the Civil War. The second part of the course will NOT focus on using historical facts to evaluate a film's fidelity to history as a scholarly discipline. It will instead examine film as art, as a commercial endeavor, and as a cultural product. It will then explore how different filmmakers portray slavery and the Civil War in different genres; how films reflect the period of their production and the personality of their producers; the commercial demands of filmmaking and how that limits subject matter; and how films shape collective historical memories. Students will also learn the basics of film criticism.