Race and Popular Culture

This course examines trajectories of representations of race in popular culture (i.e., film, music television), both produced by the dominant culture, as well as self-produced by various racial and ethnic groups. Through a historical perspective, we trace images in popular culture and how those images are tied to contemporary events of the time. We pay particular attention not only to the specific archetypes that exist, but also how those archetypes are nuanced or colored differently through the lenses of ethnicity, nationality, race, class, gender and sexuality. This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society and Culture requirement