Topic for Spring 2017: The Aesthetic of Resistance in African American Cinema
Cinema culture has provided one of the major forums for negotiating African American inclusion within the larger American body politic. D.W. Griffith's film Birth of a Nation, which celebrated the Klu Klux Klan and is widely considered to be the beginning of narrative cinema culture in the U.S., is also the beginning of an image culrure that has often worked directly against the interests of African Americans. This class will explore the ways filmmakers have challenged dominant modes of racial representation and created a cinematic aesthetic of resistance to mainstream visual culture.