Research Seminar in Gender & Sexuality Studies (350-6-1)

Topic

On Race, Sexuality, and the Moving Image

Instructors

Mark Lockwood

Meeting Info

Kresge Cent. Hall 2-380 Kaplan: Mon, Wed 9:30AM - 10:50AM

Overview of class

This course explores how film, television, and digital media have represented and reimagined Black life through the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. From early cinema's racist caricatures to the radical work of Black queer filmmakers, we will analyze how visual culture shapes the terms of representation. This course will look at both mainstream and independent works, with particular attention to how Black cultural producers create alternative practices of looking, feeling, and desiring on screen. Drawing on Black studies, queer studies, and film and media studies, students will engage in a range of texts - such as Hollywood features, experimental shorts, documentaries, and adult film - to ask: What does it mean to be seen as Black? How do moving images take up pleasure, racial fictions, and resistance? And how does screening Blackness open new possibilities for thinking about identity, community, joy, pain, and freedom?

Class Materials (Required)

Provided in Canvas

Class Attributes

Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area