AFR 315
Blackness 2.0: Race, Film and New Technologies Fall 2012
Division II
Cross-listed AMST 315
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

Media theorists have raised three key questions regarding representations of race (or the lack thereof) within contemporary media forms: (1) Is race a liability in the 21st century where utopian forecasts suggest a race-free or `post-race’ future” (2) Is there more to new media and race than assumptions about a ‘digital divide’? (3) Are race distinctions truly eliminated with digital technologies? In this course we will respond to these questions by investigating the nuanced ways that race becomes constructed in popular media forms. Although we will largely focus on representations of blackness in modern film, we will also explore the implications of `new’ medias and technologies upon the categories of race, gender, and sexuality. We will, for example, consider how avatar-based social and entertainment medias become viable forums for conceptualizing race, and whether or not these formats are somehow `better’ spaces in which racialized `bodies’ can exist. Additional discussion topics may include: how racial discourses in the `real world’ are (or are not) reshaped and redefined in the virtual world; blogosphere politics; social networking; gaming and the virtual world; activism on the web; and fandom in the twitter era.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 13
Expected: 13
Class#: 1817
Grading: no pass/fail option, no fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: evaluation based on class participation, maintenance & update of a personal blog (including weekly reading-related posts), & the design of a final, original multimedia project explicitly connected to race & new media/race & new technologies
Extra Info: May not be taken pass/fail. Not available for the Gaudino option
Prerequisites: none
Enrollment Preferences: Africana concentrators
Distributions: Division II
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
AMST 315 Division II AFR 315 Division II

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