Undergraduate Courses Spring 2027

Note: Class taught via Canvas. Not Self-Paced. Internet and computer required.

Description: Introduction to the historical context, criticism, and interpretation of short stories.

ACE: ACE 5 Humanities 

"As from A Magic Lamp:" Short Stories Across the African Continent 

How do Africana orature traditions influence the contemporary short story? In Ben Okri's 2025 collection of African short fiction, he notes that "there is something a little fantastical about African reality … [that] African reality is already fictional" (11). Okri connects the long heritage of oral storytelling to contemporary concerns about coloniality, power, and the global circulation of cultures. In his estimation, "the short story is very suited to" Pan-African realities and lived experiences (Okri 11). Our goal in this course is to provide nuanced answers to the question: Why is the short story "the ready form for interrogating … and bearing witness to the mysteries of being alive" (Okri 11)? Come prepared to relish the literary equivalent of magic! 

Description: Analysis of a variety of works by lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and transgender writers and filmmakers. Significant literary, cultural, social, and historical issues and themes.

Crosslisted with WMNS 312

ACE: ACE 5 Humanities/Ace 9 Global/Diversity

Cross listed with WMNS 315B

Description: Relation between women’s roles and popular images in the media, including romances, television shows, science fiction, and magazines, with attention to their historical development.

Ace: ACE 9 Global/Diversity

Description: The works of an author or small group of authors, usually in historical and biographical context.

AIM: Migration—whether temporary or permanent, forced or chosen, individual or collective—has been a universal human phenomenon from the beginning of times, and it continues to be a crucial topic to consider and address, particularly within the intrinsically multicultural and transnational realm of American literature. This course will investigate, through literature published in the United States from the 1940s to today, various types and experiences of migration as depicted in several genres and by a chorus of diverse voices, and also as they intersect with other components of one’s identity. Relevant scholarly works and theories by, among others, Ofelia García (on translanguaging), Susan Stanford Friedman, Meena Alexander, and André Aciman (on narratives of migration, diaspora, and exile) will help us contextualize and frame our discussions and reflections. 

Texts that we’ll read will explore the struggles and complexities, but also the transformative and empowering potentials of being a first or second generation immigrant or refugee in the United States, or an American living elsewhere, or living in the “borderlands” of south Texas. These potentials, as Homi Bhabha put it, reside in the fact that in-between spaces are “terrain[s] for elaborating strategies of selfhood – singular or communal – that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself […]" Some recurring questions that we will ask are: what does it mean to live “in-between” cultures and languages? What are the poetics employed by writers to describe themes of dislocation, displacement, survival and adjustment, cultural assimilation, heritage and mixed heritage, and new beginnings? How can literature of migration help us rethink and redefine limiting categories of identity and representation, considering that, how Gloria Anzaldúa beautifully put it, “the sea cannot be fenced”?  

Tentative reading list: selected texts by Pietro Di Donato, James Baldwin, Gloria Anzaldúa, Julie Otsuka, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, José Olivarez, Brandon Som, Việt Thanh Nguyễn, Ae He Lee, Martín Espada, and a recently published anthology of original essays by immigrants and refugees about the experience of migrating to Nebraska.

Note: Class taught via Canvas. Not Self-Paced. Internet and computer required.

Crosslisted with RELG 342

Description: Examination of the Quran, the scripture of Islam.

Note: Class taught via Canvas. Not Self-Paced. Internet and computer required.

Crosslisted with ETHN 345D

Description: Introduction to literature by and about Mexican-Americans in its cultural and historical context.

ACE Outcomes:  ACE 9 Global/Diversity ACE 5 Humanities

English 345D will examine seminal works of fiction, and, to a lesser extent, nonfiction and poetry by Chicana/Chicano authors. Through close reading, discussion, research, and writing, we’ll explore some of the literature’s aesthetic and thematic traits, seeking to understand what Chicana/Chicano authors write, how they write it, and why they write it that way. We’ll note patterns and commonalities while remaining alert to the complexity and diversity of the historied identities Chicana/Chicano authors bring to their art. The authors we'll read include: Manuel Muñoz, Cristina Rivera Garza, Helena Maria Viramontes, and others.

Study and practice of the writing of fiction for intermediate students with previous fiction writing experience.

Ace: ACE 7 Arts

This is a workshop style class intended to help you hone and polish the basic skills in narration, characterization, motif, point of view, revision, etc. learned in Introduction to Fiction Writing (ENGL 252). It also explores more advanced aspects of storytelling such as subtext, syntax, and tone. At its core, the class aims to help you craft a narrative style that's both unique to you and pushes beyond the easy, immediate, or cliché. With an emphasis upon reading fiction like a writer (thoughtfully, with an eye on the how and why) and creative experimentation in your own writing, ENGL 352 helps cement fiction writing's foundations while exploring new paths in storytelling.

Prerequisites: ENGL 253

Description: Study and practice of the writing of poetry for intermediate students with previous poetry writing experience.

This course is a prerequisite for: ENGL 453; ENGL 454

Prerequisites: Sophomore, Junior, or Senior standing.

Description: Extended practice in writing through the study of literacy--situating students' own literacy histories, exploring larger public debates about literacy, and researching the relationships between language, power, identity, and authority.

Further information is not available at this time.

Description: Instruction on the theory and practice of creative and scholarly editing and publishing in both print and digital formats.

Aim: This course will introduce you to the world of creative and scholarly publishing, in both the print and digital format. With the help of numerous class visits from professional editors, publishers, and published authors, we will learn about the various phases of the publishing process, which includes writing, editing, designing, production, promotion, marketing, and more. We will also explore the ways in which the digital environment is continuing to shape the role of editors and publishers. By the end of the semester you will know about the process that writers in various fields must go through in order to get something published, and will also have information about (and connections with) possible venues in which to pursue a career in publishing. 

Most of the semester's work will be projects, completed in large and small groups, related to an edited book that the class will help in producing. The instructor has secured a contract with Southern Illinois University Press to publish an anthology of the writings of the American poet Walt Whitman, specifically Whitman's writings about the American West, spanning his entire career and across multiple genres, some of them coming from Whitman's previously unpublished manuscripts and private papers. Students will be assisting in compiling and preparing the texts that will be part of the anthology, making the project a hands-on exercise in so-called "scholarly editing." The project is also a way of putting into practice the editorial theories that we will be learning about in class.  All students will receive credit as co-editors of the volume—and a free copy (!), once it is published. By the end of the semester, you will then be able to say that not only are you a published editor, but you helped to recover and bring to light overlooked literary texts by a major American writer for a new generation of readers.

Study of rhetoric as it functions in social and political contexts.

This course is a prerequisite for: ENGL 454

ACE: ACE 8 Civic/Ethics/ Stewardship. ACE 9 Global Diversity

As human beings living in community we are surrounded by argument, and we use argument to deliberate the policies and structures we want to uphold in our communal life together. In this course, we will develop a working definition of rhetoric and related key terms. (No prior experience with the study of rhetoric is required.) We’ll use these developed understandings to explore the following: How do the choices we make when we argue shape our communities? How does rhetoric shape the identities available to us? What are some ethical principles we would propose for “arguing well”? Across the semester we’ll examine some contemporary arguments unfolding around us (on social media, in the press, etc.) and use these examples (along with course readings) as a way to explore the three questions identified above. This course is certified as ACE 8 and ACE 9. 

This discussion/activity-centered course will have weekly readings (likely a required textbook, Rhetoric in Civic Life) and a series of electronic texts available via CANVAS. Informal writing will also be required (nearly weekly). While I do not anticipate using exams, there will be at least 2 major, individually authored course projects. If you have any additionalquestions, please contact me at dminter1@unl.edu 

Reynolds, G—001--- "The Contemporary Novel & History"

Aim:This course focuses on the ways contemporary novelists (from the US, Britain, and Canada) have fictionalized the past. What forms of research underlie historical novel? Why are certain eras/periods of history particularly significant when a novelist is approaching the past? Is the historical novel a form of escapism; or can it be a way to return to our current world? Has the historical novel achieved a prestige in literary culture – even as critical discussions of the form seem to lag behind? And underlying these points: how do we relate to, and ‘narrativize’, past times?

We’ll be looking at an array of selections from historical fiction from the past thirty years, as well as some of the key critical essays that serve to contextualize the novels. 

Many of these novels have been adapted into films and television shows, and you will be encouraged to view such works as part of our research. 

Teaching method: a mix of classroom discussion and short mini-lectures. 

Assignment: student presentations; short response papers, and longer essays. 

Novels will include: Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad; Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet; Ian McEwan, Atonement; Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace. 

Crosslisted with ENGL 830

Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing and one of the following courses: ENGL 200, ENGL 205, ENGL 206, ENGL 208, ENGL 212, ENGL 215, ENGL 216, ENGL 230, ENGL 230A, ENGL 231, ENGL 242, ENGL 244, ENGL 260, or ENGL 261.

Description: The works of a particular major author, such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, or Milton situated within literary, historical, biographical, and critical context.

Crosslisted with ENGL 845B, ETHN 445B

Prerequisites: Junior standing

Description: The study of a particular topic in African American poetry, fiction, and/or non-fiction prose.

Aim: In this class I will endeavor to introduce students to and allow them to meaningfully reflect upon critical race theory (CRT), an analytical mode useful for interrogating the narrative immanent in American Law. Fundamentally, this has meant the appropriation of Humanities methods—of storytelling and literary criticism—to expose the narratives of the law. We will push this even further, however, by taking the next logical step and seeing opinions, the judge-made law, as written texts. The close reading of these reveals “judicial irony,” the hidden motivations of “objective” legal minds contained in these opinions. African-American literature and its engagement with American jurisprudence will be the centerpiece, but select readings in Asian-American literature will enable us to explore international and contemporary implications. Thus, we will approach the law through the critical lenses pertinent to literature and the methodologies and terminology fundamental to the study of law. We will read a few select items over the course of the semester (or portions thereof), such as novels, landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases, statutes, and law review articles. Our discussions and critical assignments will be calculated to introduce students to methods of researching, assaying, and presenting the law, critical legal/race theory, and the responses made to the law by writer-activists. If this is administratively possible, we will also visit the Nebraska State Penitentiary to close the vast divide between canonical scrutiny and the real-world stories proponents of CRT would have us apprehend.

Teaching Method: Largely discursive and student-driven, except in instances where instructor knowledge is essential. We will not read novels in their entirety, as the focus will be on critical, line-by-line close reading, vis-à-vis the customary approaches to stories that allows—like a cross-section of people who witness an accident—too many variations. You will be expected to read carefully, in installments.

Requirements: Primarily, a close reading papers (longer format for grad students) and perhaps (not likely, an exam). There will be an assortment of smaller projects that bridge the divide between literary criticism and the fundamentals of basic legal research and writing.

Note: As this is a 400-level English course focusing on the intersection of literature and legal texts, students are expected to have experience in and a good grasp of critical textual analysis and literary theory developed in previous coursework. This course is ideal for juniors and seniors in English as well as students on the pre-law track.

Tentative Reading List: Although this list is not finalized, it should give you some idea of the primary texts and the historical range they will cover (my goal is to pair one primary legal text with a landmark literary text): Gerald Horne’s introduction to The Counter-Revolution of 1776 (2014); Somerset v. Stewart (1772); Jeremy Bentham “A Short Review of the Declaration” (1776);  Johnson v. McIntosh (1823); Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic’s Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (2001); “On Being the Object of Property” from Patricia J. Williams’ Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor (1991);  Michel Foucault’s Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1976);  Plessy v. Ferguson (1896); Jeremy Waldron, “Custom Redeemed by Statute” (1998); Memoir of Henry Billings Brown (1915); Andrew Zimmerman’s “Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee Institute, and the German Empire: Race and Cotton in the Black Atlantic” (2008); excerpts from W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk (1903); Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition(1901); Korematsu v. U.S. (1944); John Okada’s No-No Boy (1957); Brown v. Board of Education (1954); Derrick A. Bell, Jr.’s “Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma” (1980); Mary L. Dudziak’s “Desegregation as a Cold War Imperative” (1988); Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963); Anthony E. Cook’s “Beyond Critical Legal Studies: The Reconstructive Theology of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” (1990); J. Edgar Hoover’s Memoranda to Special Agents (1919, 1967); poems from W. Mondo Eyen we Langa’s The Black Panther is an African Cat (2006); Loving v. Virginia (1967); Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw’s “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women” (1989); Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred (1979); the Fugitive Slave Law (1850); (Fl.Stat.Annot.) Florida Statutes Annotated (1984); Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2011); Paul Butler’s “Much Respect: Toward a Hip-Hop Theory of Punishment” (2004); Anna Deavere Smith’s “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992” (1993); and, Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker (1995).

Prerequisites: ENGL 352

Description: For advanced students with previous experience in fiction writing. Longer projects in fiction writing.

This course is a prerequisite for: ENGL 454

Cross listed with ENGL 865

Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing and one of the following courses: ENGL 200, ENGL 205, ENGL 206, ENGL 208, ENGL 212, ENGL 215, ENGL 216, ENGL 230, ENGL 230A, ENGL 231, ENGL 242, ENGL 244, ENGL 260, or ENGL 261.

Description: Poetry and prose of the Romantic and Victorian periods. Their intellectual and cultural context.

This course will examine the darker side of British literature from roughly 1800 to the early twentieth century (the long nineteenth-century), surveying the Gothic tradition from the Romantics to the fin de siècle, primarily through the British novel and short fiction but with some attention to the darker British poetry and arguably even darker continental and American literature of the day, with opium use as frequent background, plot generator, and theme. The course will close by noting the sum of all fears in H. P. Lovecraft’s horror fiction and H. G. Wells’s The Croquet Player (1938). We will attend to pedagogical questions as they emerge, especially with the more commonly-taught texts such as Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, and Dracula.

Tentative texts, in chronological order:

Lewis, The Monk (1796)

Coleridge, “Kubla Khan” (1818)

Hoffmann, “The Sandman” (1816), with Freud’s “The Uncanny” (1919) 

Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)

De Quincey, Confessions of an Opium Eater (selections; 1821)

Poe, “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843), “The Purloined Letter” (1844), and “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846)

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847)

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)

Browning, “Childe Harold to the Dark Tower Came” (1855)

Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1859)

Stevenson, R. L. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)

Kipling, The Phantom ‘Rickshaw and Other Eerie Tales (1888), selected tales

Doyle, A Study in Scarlet (1887)

Machen, “The Great God Pan” (1894)

Stoker, Dracula (1897)

James, “Count Magnus” (1904) 

Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926), “The Colour Out of Space” (1927), “The Dunwich Horror” (1928), “The Shadow over Innsmouth” (1931) 

Wells, The Croquet Player (1938)

Requirements: one-page critical response papers (50%), research/seminar paper (30%), with a prospectus and annotated bibliography due earlier in the semester (10%); class participation (10%). 

Description: The shift from printed to digital texts and its implications for the humanities. Practice in digitally representing texts, archival design, and analysis of representative electronic projects dedicated to a variety of authors and genres.

AIM: This is an advanced, technical introduction to data modeling and analysis in the humanities. We will look at a variety of common data structures used by humanist scholars (including CSV, JSON, XML, and relational databases) with an eye toward learning to design and develop robust, computationally tractable representations of material commonly encountered in the humanities (ranging from government records to literary and historical documents). Along the way, we'll look at common, readily-available command-line tools that can be used to analyze, represent, and visualize data.

This course does not assume any prior knowledge of the technologies we are considering. However, you should be aware that this is an intensely technical course intended for people who are interested in creating scholarly websites and document repositories; conducting analysis of large text corpora; creating and analyzing large datasets; and similar sorts of digital humanities projects.

Please note that you must have a laptop computer and reliable access to the internet in order to take this course.

Prerequisites: Senior standing; English and Film Studies majors only

Integration and application of skills and knowledge gained in courses taken for the English major. Involves synthesis, reflection, and a substantive final writing project.

ACE 10 Integrated Product

Reynolds, G – Imagined Pasts

Aim:  This capstone course focuses, to begin with, on discussion of what you’ve learned as Humanities students during your time here. We’ll be looking at some polemical essays arguing for the value of a Humanities education. After that we will turn to close examination of historical novels, examining them as vibrant evidence of the writer’s re-conceptualization of the past. The course will have an analytical track (thinking about historical fiction within this Humanities context), as well as a creative track (since the final project will offer the option of writing/planning your own historical fiction). 

This course is a capstone to your work as English students. It approaches various stories of the past/narratives of past times as a way to reflect on what an English degree might 'do', in terms of critical analysis, close reading, and research methods.   Although English studies might now encompass many sub-fields from contemporary culture (especially if we think of Film Studies, or Composition and Rhetoric), an English degree usually entails some understanding of past cultures too (Medieval and Renaissance studies; Victorian literature; early American literature; classical rhetoric). 

Method: I will be leading the class with focused debates around several theoretical essays and then the novels themselves.  Alongside these classroom conversations, students will also be giving presentations (about their careers at UNL, and their own understanding of the literature of imagined pasts). 

Requirements: The centerpiece of the capstone is the capstone portfolio. This consists of a selection of writing you've produced during your degree (materials chosen from English courses); a reflective essay; and a final research paper. You'll also give two presentations -- one leading to your reflection paper, and one a form of prep for your final research paper. 

Reading list: a selection of essays that concentrate on the Humanities and English studies; historical fiction including Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet and Samantha Harvey, The Western Wind. 

White, L – 002

“Modernity”

AIM:  This course is required of all English majors as their capstone experience.  We will explore the condition of modernity--our present condition--from its arguable inception in the late eighteenth century to its twentieth-century manifestations, primarily through literary texts, chiefly drawn from British and American authors. 

TEACHING METHOD: Mostly discussion with some brief lectures.

REQUIREMENTS: One short critical response to the reading most weeks on set topics; one long research essay, including prospectus and annotated bibliography; 20-30 page portfolio of student’s previous work within the major and 5 page analysis of that portfolio (for departmental assessment purposes; portfolio will be P/NP).

READING LIST: Selected poetry from Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth; Austen, Sanditon; Carlyle, Past and Present; Emerson, “Experience”; Whittier, Snowbound; Darwin, selections from The Descent of Man; Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass; Carlyle, selections from Past and Present; Nietzsche, selections from The Genealogy of Morals; Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto; Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest; Freud, “Dora”; Kipling, “Regulus”; Chesterton, selections from Orthodoxy; Myrna Loy, “Feminist Manifesto” and other selected modernist manifestos; Eliot, The Waste Land; Maugham, “The Outstation”; Waugh, Decline and Fall; Amis, Lucky Jim; Stoppard, Travesties. 

Special Fee = $30

Crosslisted with JUDS 177

Description: Experience of Jews in Europe from 1933-1945. Issues of racism and religious prejudice and assumptions about humanism, tolerance and progress.

Special Fee = $30 

Description: Historical survey of film, from the invention of the photographic image in the 19th century to the present day, covering a wide range of styles and themes and a diverse array of films from around the world. Weekly film screenings.

ACE:  ACE 7 Arts

AIM: This course gives an historical overview of film, from the invention of the photographic image in the 19th century to the present day, covering a wide range of styles, film movements, themes, and directors. We will emphasize the fact that history is a contested field and acknowledge the role that a variety of social and political forces have played in crafting an official history of film – a history that is recorded and reproduced in awards ceremonies like the Academy Awards, “Best of all Times” lists, textbooks (including the one we will use: A SHORT HISTORY OF FILM, 4th edition by Wheeler Winston Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster), and archives, and that often minoritizes certain filmmakers and filmmaking traditions while centering others. We will reflect on and broaden our scope beyond this official history to learn about the important aesthetic innovations and interventions of films and filmmakers representative of a range of perspectives and backgrounds.

Special Fee = $30 

Weekly film screenings.

Description: Various film genres, such as Gothic, the Western, and film noir, from their inception in the early 1900s to the present day.

ACE:  ACE 7 Arts

AIM: This course will consider the idea of genre in multiple genres of film, which might include science fiction, horror, the Western, Film Noir, suspense, the political thriller. Our goal is to identify and analyze the various elements and tropes that identify these films with particular genres; to explore the idea of genre; and to consider how audiences for particular genres form and create discourses and subcultures around those genres.

Method: Students will view most films as homework on the Canvas site. We will also analyze clips in class. Some lecture on the history of genre and its connection to genre/popular literature. In class discussion and analysis of the films we watch. 

Assignments: Students are expected to view assigned films on their own when they are made available on Canvas. We will be covering 1-2 films a week (most often two). Additional reading of film criticism and reviews. Assignments will include weekly quizzes and/or short responses, analytical papers, midterm, and final exam.

Possible Film List (very tentative at this point): Science Fiction: Forbidden Planet, Metropolis, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Creation of the Humanoids, Planet of the Apes, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Aniara; Horror: Nosferatu, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Night of the Living Dead, Rosemary’s Baby, Jennifer’s Body, Train to Busan; Western: High Noon, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Seven Samurai, The Magnificent Seven. Film Noir/Suspense: The Killing, The Night of the Hunter, Shadow of a Doubt, Get Out.

Special Fee = $30

Crosslisted with WMNS 311

Prerequisites: 3 hours FILM or 3 hours WMNS

Description: Studies in contemporary film theory and criticism informed by feminist, queer, and transgender theories. Weekly film screenings.

ACE: ACE 9 Global/Diversity

Aim: This course engages contemporary film theory and criticism informed by feminism, queer theory, and transgender theory with an eye toward how these theories 1) build upon and complicate canonical texts in feminist film theory and 2) shed new light on contemporary and historical films. We will consider how issues of representation both on-screen and behind the camera can shape the production and reception of individual films, film historiography, and cultural and political understandings of gender and sexuality. Most importantly, we will explore, through weekly in-class screenings, how film has been deployed to create new ways of imagining bodies, desires, pleasures, and identities. Some of the films we will watch are:

Funeral Parade of Roses (dir. Toshio Matsumoto, 1969, Japan)

Dyketactics (dir. Barbara Hammer, 1974, US)

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (dir. Amy Heckerling, 1982, US)

Born in Flames (dir. Lizzie Borden, 1983, US)

Sleepaway Camp (dir. Robert Hiltzik, 1983, US)

Paris Is Burning (dir. Jennie Livingston, 1990, US)

Trans (dir. Sophie E. Constantinou, 1994, US)

Chocolate Babies (dir. Stephen Winter, 1996)

By Hook or By Crook (dirs. Harry Dodge and Silas Howard, 2001, US)

Real Women Have Curves (dir. Patricia Cardoso, 2002, US)

Lady Bird (dir. Greta Gerwig, 2017, US)

Kokomo City (dir. D. Smith, 2023, US)

Something You Said Last Night (dir. Luis de Filippis, 2022, US)

PREREQUISITE 

3 hours in FILM or 3 hours in WMNS or instructor permission 

Special Fee = $30

Crosslisted with ETHN 344

Prerequisites: 3hrs FILM or 3hrs ETHN

May be repeated once for credit with a different topic and different instructor.

Description: Construction of ethnic identities in film and TV and the impact of such images on American culture.

Course Description:  Baadasssss Cinema: the 1970s is designed to make legible black masculine/femininities as portrayed in the film genre called Blaxploitation or Baadassss Cinema in the 1970s. During this genre of filmmaking, the Black Action Hero/ine gained prominence as actors and directors desired to overthrow negative images of the African American that had a stronghold on the American psyche as a result of D. W. Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation (1915). The nuts and bolts of Ethn/Film 344 is careful screening of a variety of films for multiple purposes and then discussing and writing about what you have screened.

In the process, the course endeavors the following: 

• to familiarize students with some film forms, elements, and socio-cultural and political dynamics of an era / genre;
• to equip students with an intermediate knowledge of African Americans in the film industry of the United States beginning with the detective genre pre-Blaxploitation Era; 
• to gain insights into this movement that featured the Black hero/ine;
• to offer a broad sweep of African American film history; and,
• offer a brief history of African American representation in film and determine meanings behind cinematic representation.

A significant part of this analytical endeavor is related, ironically, to unlocking your creative voice with the goal to develop intellectual and practical skills, including proficiency in written, oral, and visual communication, inquiry techniques, critical and creative thinking, information assessment, teamwork, and problem-solving.

Lecture

After class quizzes

Scene Analysis (written, podcast, or YouTube)

Final Exam and/or film project

May be repeated once for credit with a different topic.

Description: Study of specific critical and historical film theory and approaches to film history using more difficult texts (both as films and as readings) for the students, to create an intense immersion into more complex films and critical readings.

ACE: ACE 7 Arts

This class engages texts from film theory and film history to study how films shape and are shaped by our contemporary sensibilities. We will primarily focus on US-based films, both Hollywood and independent/avant garde, to think about how their narratives and imagery, the context of their production, and their reception by a variety of audiences are not just reflections of a single reality but actually influence and produce multiple realities. In other words, we will consider the question: How do films help us respond to and construct the “real world” around us? In so doing, we will consider larger philosophical questions about the nature of reality, as well as questions more specific to film theory about the role of film art in politics/popular opinion, film’s ability to reflect and influence the individual and collective unconscious, and how the film medium alters our conception of space and time.

A few of the movies I’m planning to show: Jurassic Park, Sinners, Annihilation, Pulse, Memento, The People’s Joker, I Saw the TV Glow [and/or Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma], and 32 Sounds.

Mode of instruction and assessment: Weekly film screenings in class and via Canvas, lecture/discussion, student presentations, two exams.