Course Description
With special attention to musical content, this course explores the roles played by “blackness” in U.S. and world cinema. Examination of the positioning of black people, black music, and black cultural content in films made from the World War II era to the present.
Athena Title
Studies in Black Film
Non-Traditional Format
This version of the course will be taught as writing intensive, which means that the course will include substantial and ongoing writing assignments that a) relate clearly to course learning; b) teach the communication values of a discipline—for example, its practices of argument, evidence, credibility, and format; and c) prepare students for further writing in their academic work, in graduate school, and in professional life. The written assignments will result in a significant and diverse body of written work (the equivalent of 6000 words or 25 pages) and the instructor (and/or the teaching assistant assigned to the course) will be closely involved in student writing, providing opportunities for feedback and substantive revision.
Prerequisite
Two 2000-level ENGL courses or (one 2000-level ENGL course and one 3000-level ENGL course) or (one 2000-level ENGL course and one 2000-level CMLT course)
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Students will examine the place of black people and culture strung between roles as witness to an unspeakable, or unfilmable, experience (blackness) in American life and as conspirator in a medium (film) often designed to deliver fantasies to the viewer. Students will find the situation of "blackness" in a kind of serial rebellion against the paradoxical abstraction and intimacy of film as a genre and against the fantasy-delivery role of cinema in American/modern life. All these relationships, of course, vary from film to film, from era to era, and often differ in films set outside the U.S. Students will gain a more sophisticated sense of how the racial politics in each era influenced the making and reception of these films. Tracing these politics across the decades, students will gain a more nuanced sense of how racial politics and the history of film operate together and how history has tracked increased autonomy, agency, and complexity in the depiction of black people and culture in film, a sense of progress they will measure against their sense of the contemporary world. Throughout the course, students will keep a rigorous writing journal matching quotations and citations from the course materials with reflections that connect those passages directly to concepts and themes from lecture and discussion. From these journals, students will develop an extended essay running across the arc of the course. Over the term, students will formalize sections of these essays, turn them in, and receive feedback from the instructor. As the term progresses, students will accumulate a folder of notes and drafts, which allows them to keep track of their progress and allows the instructor to chart their revisions en route to a final draft due on the last day of class. This method provides a semester’s worth of practical, technical guidance in writing while (based as it is on student journals) keeping the roots of the writing process personal and organic. It is meant to support students as they engage the process of writing at several stages.
Topical Outline
Required and Recommended Books James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work Krin Gabbard, Jammin at the Margins: Jazz and the American Cinema Michael Gillespie, Film Blackness: American Cinema and the Idea of Black Film Ed Sikov, Film Studies: An Introduction Tim Corrigan and Patricia White, The Film Experience: An Introduction Robert Sklar, Move-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies Donald Bogle, Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood Paul Rancière, The Intervals of Cinema Grades are comprised of four equally weighted parts: 1) attendance/participation (each student will do multiple presentations; participation also includes viewing of two films per week on reserve in the Main Library); 2) viewing journals (submitted at the end of class); 3) (due week nine); 4) (due the final day of class) research/writing projects exploring the role of black people and culture in films between WWII and the present. All students will be expected to be at every scheduled meeting of the course. Course schedule: week 1: meeting before classes begin week 2: general introductions, syllabus, and course handouts 1 week 3: NO CLASS—MLK DAY Intro theory: 1) Barthes, “Listening,” 2) Corrigan and White “Film Sound: Listening to the Cinema,” 3) Sikov, “Sound.” week 4: race, blackness, and American film: 1) Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work 1940s; Michael Gillespie: “Introduction: We Insist: The Idea of Black Film” 1940s week 5: class: (1947) New Orleans reserve: (1943) Stormy weather reserve: (1942) Syncopation 1950s week 6: class: (1951) A Street Car Named Desire reserve: (1958) St. Louis Blues reserve: (1954) Carmen Jones late 50s – early 1960s class: (1961) Paris Blues reserve: (1959) Ascenseur pur l’échafaud (Elevator to the Gallows) reserve: (1959) Shadows week 8: class (writing week) 1960s week 9: class: (1963) Nothing But A Man reserve: (1966) Blow Up reserve: (1966) A Man Called Adam Paper 1 due in class week 10: S p r i n g B r e a k 1970s week 11: class: (1975) Killer of Sheep reserve: (1975) Cornbread Earl and Me reserve: (1970) Les Stances and Sophie 1980s week 12: class: (1986) She’s Gotta Have It reserve: (1982) Losing Ground reserve: (1986) Down By Law 1980s week 13 : class: (1989): Do the Right Thing reserve: (1984) Beat Street reserve: (1983) Wild Style 1990s week 14 : class: (1990) Paris is Burning reserve: (1991) Daughters of the Dust reserve: (1994) Sugar Hill 1990s week 15: class: (1997) Love Jones reserve: (1995) Clockers reserve: (1992) Just Another Girl on the IRT 2000s week 16: class: (2009) Medicine for Melancholy reserve: (2002): Charlotte Sometimes reserve: (1999) Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samuri 2010s week 17: class: (2012) Restless City reserve: (2012) Moonlight reserve: (2014) Secrets of the Magic City Paper 2 due in class – course schedule subject to change as necessary – changes will be announced in class