Using Hollywood films as the primary texts, this course will engage how race and racialized performance were portrayed in 1970s. Looking at various genres of film--including blaxploitation, noir, and musicals--the course will introduce students to many of the debates surrounding the aesthetic, political, and social climate of the US in the 1970s which were marked by the increasing influence of identity politics, the Ethnic Revival, and black power. Using texts ranging from Shaft (1971) to Deliverance (1972) to Saturday Night Fever (1977) to The Wiz (1978), this interdisciplinary class will use film, literary, and performance studies methods to consider the ways in which intersecting modes of racial, gender, and class identity develop and change across U.S. historical eras, particularly through the dissemination of media images. Some questions we will consider: What did "blackness" and "whiteness" mean on movie screens in the 1970s, and by connection to/in the meaning of "America"? How did the rise of "white ethnics" contribute to the making of "New Hollywood" in the decade? How does film operate as a site of myth-making and cultural understanding?

Readings will draw from fiction, drama, and popular criticism, and directors we'll study will include Melvin Van Peebles, Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Gordon Parks, and Sidney Lumet.