Department of French and Italian

Variable Title: Race and Ethnicity in Contemporary French Cinema
Prerequisite: Two courses from FRIT-F 305, F 306, F 361, F 362, F 363, F 364, F 375; or one course from FRIT-F 222, F 225, F 226, F 227, F 310, F 311 and one course from FRIT-F 305, F 306, F 361, F 362, F 363, F 364, F 375; or department consent

Taking an interdisciplinary perspective from postcolonial studies and film studies, this course will examine the representation of race and ethnicity in French cinema as a contested field of cultural production and of sociopolitical discourse. To what degree do film and other audio-visual mass media (television, internet, social media) serve both to reify and to contest institutional power structures and administrative practices inherited from the colonial period, as well as deeply ingrained modes of imagining racial and ethnic difference as part of or in contradistinction to French national identity? In exploring these questions, the course will juxtapose various genres (commercial melodramas and comedies vs. non-commercial documentaries and docu-dramas); perspectives (films by Sub-Saharan African and North-African directors vs. white French directors); themes relevant to different demographic groups (legal and clandestine migration from Africa and other parts of the world to France; the hybrid cultural identities of Muslims born in France with family ties to the Maghreb; the role that gender and class play in relation to race and ethnicity.

FRIT-F 461     #30863     9:45A-11:00A       TuTh      WH 108        Prof. Brett Bowles

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