Cinema can function both as a mirror that reflects the reality of society as well as a powerful tool that can dictate, through representation, social and cultural notions that then become "real." In the context of media-driven and racially stratified American society, filmic representations of race and people of color form a particularly important aspect of this condition. Film has been enormously important in determining how white audiences understand people of color, as well as a powerful tool by producers and directors of color for challenging racist attitudes in favor of alternative and more progressive representations of racial-ethnic peoples in the USA. This course examines the development of images that concern race in 20th century American film, focusing on key films of early and mid-century cinema, and subsequent, late century productions. The course is particularly concerned with the politics and aesthetics of representation and idea(l)s of the real or authentic in the filmic representation of people of color.

Black British Cultural Studies is interested primarily in the relationship between Blackness and identity in Diaspora, including visual media, critical theory, and cultural studies. In the past thirty years, Black British scholarship has been one of the more influential strains of thought in postmodern thinking. Black British thinkers, such as C.L.R. James, Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, Hazel Carby, Kobena Mercer and others, have actively reconstructed ideas about blackness, racial identities, and the role of people of color in western nation-states. In this sense, Black British critical theory has been essential to other scholars and thinkers examining race and identity in US contexts. This course examines the development and maturation of Black British Cultural Studies, with particular focus on those scholars associated with the Centre for Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. Topics include: Blackness and Essential Identities, Diaspora Cultural Politics, political strategies in an era of conservative retrenchment, and critical reinterpretations of "Race."

PS 182 Contested Ideals in American Political Thought