AMST 350(F) Studies in Film and American Political Memory

This class will examine how concrete historical moments are represented in film, and how these films function in popular memory. Beginning with an introduction to historical and visual analysis, the course will look at two versions of the precinematic Civil War and Reconstruction period in Griffith's foundational racist epic, Birth of a Nation, and in Oscar Micheaux's response, Within Our Gates. The second unit of the course will focus on Japanese internment during World War II, through U.S. Army newsreel films and Hollywood films like Destination Tokyo, as well as strategies of recovery and rewriting of that period by films like Izon's Emi, Nakamura's Conversations, Tajiri's History and Memory, and VC's Pieces of a Dream. The third unit of the course will consider contemporary re-visionings of political movements of the 1960s and 1970s, reading 1968's Black Panther, Emile de Antonio's Underground, the women's performance collectives documented in Not for Sale, in relation to the later films, Panther, I Shot Andy Warhol, Boogie Nights, and Shulie. Evaluation will be based on class participation and three papers. Enrollment limited to 20.

Hour: L. JOHNSON