AMST-A 200: Comparative Racialization in the United States
Clark Barwick
Summer 2009, Session I
T, W, TR 10AM-Noon
3 Credit Hours, Distribution Credit: A&H
In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois predicted that the “problem of the color-line” would be America’s greatest challenge in the twentieth century. During Du Bois’s time, many Americans viewed race primarily as a white-black issue. However, as America has become more complex, there is less consensus as to exactly what terms such as “race,” “racial identity,” and “racism” actually mean. For instance, what social and political value do categories such as “Indian American” or “African American” or “Asian American” continue to hold in today’s age? Can we establish any basic shared experiences among Americans of color? How do whites perform their “whiteness”? And what happens when Americans identify with more than one racial and/or national heritage?
In this course, we will place a number of perspectives—from anthropologists, to Supreme Court justices, to filmmakers, to activists— in conversation, in order to establish a workable history of race in America and to enrich our understanding of how race is learned, experienced, and lived. Emphasis will be placed on how race is constructed in popular culture, and we will look at texts ranging from fiction by Junot Diaz and Bharati Mukherjee, to films by Spike Lee and Wes Anderson, to recent episodes of South Park and The Office.
AMST 201 (Course # 5421): U.S. Movements and Institutions
Topic: Cultural Paranoia and the Contemporary Hollywood Misdirection Film
Instructor: Seth Friedman
(3 cr. hrs.) A & H
T-F 3:30PM - 4:20PM; Weekly film screenings, M 3:25PM – 5:30PM
Since the early 1990s, there has been a spate of Hollywood films such as The Sixth Sense (1999), The Usual Suspects (1995), and Fight Club (1999), which are renowned for their surprise endings. All these films possess a similar narrative structure; they each contain a revelation that encourages spectators to reinterpret retrospectively all that has come before. This class will investigate the reasons why this long-standing narrative mode has proliferated in the U.S. over the past two decades. It is significant that some U.S. audiences have been drawn to films that demand greater interpretive work than what is typically needed to decipher the standard Hollywood fare. To address this apparent paradox, we will examine the socio-cultural and industrial conditions that have made misdirection films attractive to both Hollywood producers and some U.S. audiences over approximately the past twenty years. We will attempt to determine why an audience for these films has recently formed. Specifically, we will address why films containing narratives that suggest that the “truth” is being concealed from view have become so appealing to a significant segment of U.S. spectators. We will focus on questions such as the following: What relationship do films and other forms of media have to the culture in which they are produced and consumed? What can the popularity of contemporary misdirection films tell us about the acceptability of different modes of interpretation in the U.S. since the early 1990s? How do communities form from specific interpretive practices? What can these films tell us about contemporary racial and gender politics in the U.S.? What connection do these films have to the development of new home-viewing technologies, the rise of the Internet, and other recent changes impacting the U.S. media industries? To help us respond to these questions, we will read selections from a variety of disciplines such as Anthropology, Film and Media Studies, History, Literary Studies, and Political Science.
Films will likely include the following: Arlington Road (1999), Fight Club (1999), Jacob’s Ladder (1990), Memento (2000), Psycho (1960), The Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (2000), and The Usual Suspects (1995).
