Race, Film, and Religion

In this course, we will examine how cinema both constructs and reproduces anti-black racism and how cinema works to liberate blackness from the strictures of racial domination. We will watch films from the past three decades that provide an opportunity to interrogate the relationship between race, gender, and sexuality. These films will also enable us to think about how cinema introduces unconventional notions of the sacred, a process that involves affect, desire, and imagination. Films that we watch may include: Moonlight, Medicine for Melancholy, Black Panther, Daughters of the Dust, Get Out, US, Pariah, and Selma.