Summer Undergraduate Courses

The course is offered through the Summer Abroad program. Please visit their website for details and the application form. 

This course will contextualize the history of Black British cinema, to include Art cinema, television, and gallery-located visual practice, and their interconnectedness. The practices and networks of collaboration that have shaped the development and aesthetics of Black British film culture from the 1980s to the present will be explored. In the words of Stuart Hall, artists collectively “finding a new language” to challenge normative post-war British culture, necessitated seismic shifts in politics, aesthetics, and theory. Topics include Black Power’s transnational remit, London as post-imperial migrant city, “political Blackness,” Black film collectives, among other topics. We will read canonical works by Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, and Homi K. Bhabha, as well as film and literary scholars, to help frame this conjunctural moment of Black British culture. Media works by John Akomfrah, Horace Ové, Steve McQueen, Menelik Shabbaz, Stephen Frears, Gurinder Chadha, Ngozi Onwurah, Lionel Ngakane, Martine Attille, Isaac Julien, among others, will be screened.

Instructor: Kass Banning

Distribution Requirement: Humanities

Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations