This course surveys the history of African American film and African Americans in film, exploring the textual, industrial, and cultural production of Blackness in American cinema from the silent era to the digital present. The course considers the dominant, often stereotyped and devalued constructions of Blackness in mainstream Hollywood film, in relation to the self-defining representations and active responses of African American filmmakers and audiences. In surveying a range of historical and contemporary texts, we will track key movements, films, figures, and themes in the history of mediated Blackness and of "Black Film," paying particular attention to how Blackness has been intersectionally constructed in relation to gender, sexuality, class, and place, and how those representations shift over time. |