This course focuses on how media and blackness intersect in our world. Students read theoretical texts and evaluate various forms of media that prompt nuanced understandings of black social life in the digital age, from film to music videos to gaming to Black Twitter. By gaining a deep and nuanced understanding of how media and racial politics shape each other, you can discern the role of images and their makers in society; how, if at all, media reflects social, cultural, and historical change; and the ethical dilemmas that arise at the intersection of race and representation.Images and various forms of media communicate the ways we negotiate notions of individual and collective identity in the past and present. The course culminates in Black Media Mixtape, a collaborative, student-designed digital project.

View Black Media Mixtape Vol. 1 on Soundcloud and the living archive on Instagram