This course explores some issue, theme or period related to Africana Studies. May be repeated for credit with different topics.
| Distribution Area | Prerequisites | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| 1/2-1 course |
Reading African American cinema as a pivotal archive in African American cultural production, this course explores the diverse black aesthetic traditions that African American film has and continues to develop, explore, and shape. Specifically, the course will track how films produced, written, and/or directed by African Americans are situated in larger debates about the politics of race and representation.
Many readers may be familiar with groundbreakers like Lorraine Hansberry, whose Raisin in the Sun has become part of the canon of Civil Rights era reading. But in the 1960s and 1970s, African American women playwrights like Adrienne Kennedy and Ntozake Shange were doing experiments with language and theatricality that had never been seen before. And from the 1980s into the present, we continue to witness important works by writers like Anna Deavere Smith, Suzan-Lori Parks (the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Drama), Lynn Nottage, and many others.
This course focuses primarily on works by these more recent playwrights, with specific attention to ways that race/racism and gender/sexuality-- as well as social class and professional marginalization--have affected their work and become integral to their plays. This is a course that will require active participation; since it is also a "W" class, students will do a variety of writing exercises and more formal papers.