This course explores film and media produced by people of African descent living in or from Latin America.

This course surveys media (i.e., film, television, podcasts, internet, music) coming from Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and the United States. Readings are drawn from a variety of disciplines, bringing together scholarship on race & blackness and Latin American cultural studies. Readings may include bell hooks, Stuart Hall, James Snead, Saidiya Hartman, Stephen Best, Michael Gillespie, Racquel Gates, Katherine McKittrick, José Esteban Muñoz, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Christina Sharpe.

By exploring expressions of Blackness throughout regions of Latin America, this course considers the relationship that social-historical processes such as colonialism, nation-making, and continued racism have on media production. In addition, this course will examine the ways race, class, gender, and sexuality intersect within Latin American film and media. The primary goals of this class are (1) to analyze selected films within the context of contemporary theories and debates about race and blackness; and (2) to provide tools and strategies that encourage and support students’ ongoing critical engagements with and assessments of contemporary media culture’s images of Latin America.

This course counts toward the Spanish major and as literature credit for the Spanish minor.

Class Format:

For Winter 2022:  During certain periods of the term, we will have an “in-person day” with large discussions about the course content; during other periods of the term, we will have an "online day" where students collaborate in small-group activities via Canvas and Zoom and complete asynchronous assignments.