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Film 150: Multicultural America
Class Meeting: Tuesday 9-11:50
Professor Vicki Callahan
(March 7, 2007)
Office hours: Friday, 10-12 or by appt.
Friday office hour location CRT 187 (lab next to our seminar)
Office Location: 100 Vogel
Phone contact: 229-6516
e-mail contact: vacall@uwm.edu
Cultures and Communities Prog course; req’d service learning component. Not
open to students who have taken Anthro 150 (ER), English 150 (ER), History 150
(ER), Sociol 150 (ER), Wmns 150 (ER). Prereq: none. Carries GER-Arts credit.
Service Learning Component
In cooperation with the UWM Service Learning Center, students will complete 15 hours
of service learning through direct engagement in diverse Milwaukee communities.
Creative projects, such as production of a photo essay or multimedia history, will draw
from and elaborate on these multicultural experiences in a way that reflects students’
engagement with diversity while broadening their cultural and historical perspectives.
Course Description
This class will examine the ways in which racial and ethnic difference has been
visualized in the United States. Students will study how artists from U.S. communities of
color (African American, Native American, Asian American, Latino/a American) have
created works in film, video, and other visual media to express their experiences and to
analyze issues of race and ethnicity in the U.S. from their perspective. Looking primarily
at film and photography, but also other visual “artifacts” (e.g., video, new media,
performance, “scripted spaces” such as museums and movie houses) we will explore how
images have helped to “inscribe” a diverse range of narratives around cultural identity.
We will begin by looking at the fundamentals of media literacy and how images not only
speak to us, but also speak to us in a range of “dialects” from bias and oppression to
affirmation, empowerment, and democratization. By tracing the visual markers of
difference(s) historically, we will discuss how images have operated both to “naturalize”
structural patterns of oppression as well as to critique and challenge received notions
regarding diversity. In particular, students will examine how media artists of color have
proposed new or alternative narratives and visions for American history and culture. The
goal of the class is to understand both how images work on us and how we might make
them work ourselves. To that end, the course features a “hands on” component and
students will conduct visual research on cultural diversity, which is then the basis of the
final project: a photo book (digital or print based) or short film. No prior media arts
experience is required/expected and part of the course time will be utilized in lab time to
demonstrate a variety of simple creative tools that might be employed.
In order for each student to extend and enhance their understanding of transcultural
similarities and differences, students will complete 15 hours of service learning in the
Milwaukee area. The service learning component to the course will provide the student
with an opportunity to consider how visual practices and media arts provide unique tools
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for the “writing” of multicultural history(s). Students will be asked to research and
visualize some aspect of Milwaukee’s multicultural history based on their direct
engagement in community activities designed to broaden their perspectives on
multicultural diversity in everyday life. Each student will be required to construct one
photo essay or multimedia essay based on this experience. The final class project, a
media archive, will also work in conjunction with the service learning partnership.
Course Grading Percentages:
10% Media Literacy Exercise (short essay on image analysis)
20% Photo Essay or Multimedia Essay on Milwaukee neighborhood, Walnut Way
(incorporates image and text). You will need to purchase disposable camera or
make pinhole camera for this project.
50% Final Project, Critical and Creative Research on Walnut Way Neighborhood (will
include text and media components that will fit into one final group class project,
a media archive on Walnut Way Community History)
20% Class Participation, includes weekly assignments, reading questions, D2L
postings, and attendance and active engagement and discussion during class.
EXTRA CREDIT: Extra Credit is available by attendance at the following events:
Union Theatre screenings (one point each event with 1 page, 250 word critique) and Film
Department/Conceptual Studies presentation (max. 2 points with attendance and 1 page,
250 word critique), or UWM Sociocultural Programming Events (1 point for
performance/exhibit, max. 2 points for lecture, 1 page critique). You may receive a total
of 10 points extra credit which will be added onto your final grade.
Required Textbooks:
Coco Fusco, Brian Wallis Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self; New
York: Harry Abrams, 2003.
Allan G. Johnson, “Privilege, Power, and Difference, second ed. Madison: McGraw-Hill
Higher Ed, 2006.
Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, New York:
Little, Brown and Co. 1993.
Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin, America on Film: Representing Race, Class,
Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.
Other readings will be provided via electronic reserve as noted on the course outline.
Course Schedule: Syllabus subject to revisions. I will post any revisions on d2l site
and inform you via course reflector of the available new copy.
Very important, please note: You are responsible for the readings on the day noted
on the syllabus (ie, you should be able to discuss on day it is on the schedule). Also,
ALL work must be turned in on the assigned due dates. No late work is accepted
without a documented excuse (e.g., doctor’s excuse).
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Jan. 25, Week I: How Images “Speak”: frame and figure
Screening:
Marlon Riggs, Ethnic Notions, 1986 (56 mins)
Guest: Ife Olatunji, UWM Institute of Service Learning (olatunji@uwm.edu)
Feb. 1, Week 2: Hierarchies of Viewing
Reading:
Coco Fusco, ““Racial Time, Racial Marks, Racial Metaphors”” (in Only Skin Deep)
Johnson, Privilege, Power, and Difference, Chapters 1-4.
Ronald Takaki, Chapter 1
Viewing: The Angry Eye 2001
Guest: Visitors from Walnut Way
Lab work: demythologizing technology – image capture possibilities, image cropping,
enhancement, manipulations
Feb 8, Week 3: Class Visit to Walnut Way (arrive at 9:30 am, North Ave. bus, #21)
Reading:
Johnson, Chapters 5-7
Lauri Firstenberg, “Autonomy and the Archive in America: Reexaming the Intersection
of Photography and Stereotype” (in Only Skin Deep)
Feb 15, Week 4: The Silent Cinema Builds a Nation: Citizenship in D.W. Griffith and
Oscar Micheaux
Reading:
Benshoff and Griffin, Part I, Chapter 1 American Film and Culture, “Introduction to Film
Form and Representation” and Intro to Part 2; “What is Race”
Leigh Raiford, “The Consumption of Lynching Images”
Ronald Takaki, Chapters 3 and 5
Screening:
D.W. Griffith, His Trust; His Trust Fulfilled; Clips from Birth of a Nation (1915)
Oscar Micheaux, Within Our Gates (1919)
Feb. 22, Week 5: Whiteness
Reading:
Benshoff and Griffith, “American Film and the Concept of Whiteness”
Richard Dyer, “On the Matter of Whiteness” (Only Skin Deep)
Takaki, Chapter 6
Screening:
Alan Crosland, The Jazz Singer, 1927
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March 1, Week 6 Lab Work
First Assignment Due (short essay on image analysis)
March 8, Week 7: African American Cinema
Reading:
Benshoff and Griffin, Chapter 4, “African Americans and American Film”
Takaki, Chapter 13
Screening:
Spike Lee, Bamboozled, 2000 (135 mins)
March 15, Week 8 Native Americans and American Film
Reading:
Benshoff and Griffin, Chapter 5, “Native Americans and American Film”
Aleta M. Ringlero, “Prairie Pinups: Reconsidering Historic Portraits of American Indian
Women” (Only Skin Deep)
Takaki, Chapters 2, 11
Screening:
Chris Eyre, Smoke Signals, 1998
2nd Assignment: Photography Essay Due on the Walnut Way Community (using
your disposable camera)
******March 16-23 SPRING BREAK****
March 29, Week 9 Intersections of Gender and Race
Reading:
Benshoff and Griffin, “Asian Americans and American Film”
Screening:
E.A. Dupont, Piccadilly, 1929 (clips)
Grace Lee, The Grace Lee Project 2005, (68 mins)
April 5, Week 10 Asian Americans and American Film
Reading:
Takaki, Chapters 8, 10
Screening:
Christine Choy and Renee Tajima-Pena, Who Killed Vincent Chin, 1987 (87 mins)
FINAL PROJECT PROPOSALS DUE
Lab work: imovie editing, assembling materials
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April 12, Week 11 Latinos and American Film
Reading:
Benshoff and Griffin Chapter 7, “Latinos and American Film”
Takaki, Chapters 7 and 12
Screening:
Patricia Cardosa, Real Women Have Curves, 2002, (90 min
April 19, Week 12: Re-Viewing History: The Japanese American Internment
Reading:
Elena Tajima Creef, “The Gendering of Historical Trauma in Internment Camp
Documentary: The Case of Steven Okazaki’s Days of Waiting in Countervisions: Asian
American Film Criticism (on library e-reserve)
Karen Higa, “Toyo Miyatake and “Our World” (Only Skin Deep)
Screening:
Steven Okazaki, Days of Waiting, 1990 (28 mins)Lab work: imovie editing: sound/image
relation
FINAL PROJECT CHECK-IN – (Updates on research, review of Pantherfile)
April 26, Week 13 Diasporas and Hybrid Identities
Screening:
Mira Nair, Mississippi Masala, 1991
Reading:
Benita Mehta, “Emigrants Twice Displaced: Race, Color and Identity in Mira Nair’s
Mississippi Masala” in Screening Asian Americans, ed., Peter Feng
Howard Winant, “The Theoretical Status of the Concept of Race” (Only Skin Deep)
OR
Alternative histories, Alternative media forms
Reading:
C. Ondine Chavoya, “No-Movies: The Art of False Documents” (Only Skin Deep)
Screening:
Gregorio Rocha, The Lost Reels of Pancho Villa, 2003 (49 mins)
May 3, Week 14 New Media Tools and the Digital Archives
Screening:
Carroll Parrott Blue, The Dawn at my Back: Memoir of a Black Texas Upbringing
Interactive DVD
Presentation and Discussion of Class Final Project, Part I.
May 10, Week 15 What Can We Do?
Presentation and Discussion of Class Projects, Part II
Reading:
Johnson, Chapters 8-9
Takaki, 14
• Additional Course and Departmental Policies:
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Special Needs and Questions: If you will need accommodations in order to meet any
of the requirements of this course, please contact me as soon as possible.
Feel free to visit me at my office during office hours to discuss assignments or any
questions or comments you have.
The Department of Film follows UWM academic policies which are posted on the
departmental bulletin board, or available online at
http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/Acad_Aff/policy/uniformsyllabus.html .
Drops & Incompletes: No drops are permitted after the 5th week of the semester.
Incompletes will be considered ONLY for situations in which you are maintaining a “B”
or better grade at the end of classes, and you are unable, because of illness or other
circumstances beyond your control, to complete your course work. You must provide
written documentation to the instructor indicating that you were prevented from
completing your course requirements. You must complete course work for an
Incomplete during the first eight weeks of the next semester of enrollment (excluding
summer sessions). Access to department facilities for the purpose of completing course
requirements is extended five weeks into the next semester.
Use of Copyrighted Material: Use of copyrighted material is strictly prohibited unless
the images, sounds, texts, etc. are being significantly altered and it is clear in the opinion
of the instructor that the original material is being studied, analyzed and commented
upon by the student. Grades for work failing to satisfy this requirement for copyrighted
materials will be significantly lowered. The instructor reserves the right to determine what
constitutes fair use of copyrighted material.
Project Storage: Projects from prior semesters not retrieved from the Film Department
Office, Mitchell Hall Room B70, by the 4th week of classes will be disposed of. The Film
Department is not responsible for completed projects that have not been retrieved.