Spring 2025 Film GR5730 section 001

Minstrelsy and Popular Culture

Minstrelsy and Popular Cu

Call Number 14831
Day & Time
Location
T 10:10am-12:40pm
To be announced
Points 3
Grading Mode Standard
Approvals Required None
Instructor Racquel Gates
Type SEMINAR
Method of Instruction In-Person
Course Description

Minstrelsy is one of America’s original forms of popular entertainment, and its formal, thematic, and narrative elements continue to reverberate throughout popular culture to this day. Indeed, given the close relationship between stage performance and the development of screen cultures, it should come as little surprise that many of the tropes and representational strategies that film and media adopted to portray blackness bore, and continue to bear, close relation to minstrelsy and blackface. This seminar will examine the ways that minstrelsy has played a crucial role in the evolution of American popular culture, especially in film and media. The course will focus on the complex function and legacy of minstrelsy, whether from the perspective of Jewish artists trying to establish their racial identities in early Hollywood, or African American artists attempting to subvert dominant representational modes.

Web Site Vergil
Department Film
Enrollment 10 students (15 max) as of 11:06AM Friday, December 6, 2024
Subject Film
Number GR5730
Section 001
Division School of the Arts
Open To Schools of the Arts, Engineering:Graduate, GSAS, Professional Studies
Section key 20251FILM5730R001