Communication 7930-001
Media, Race, and Identity
Spring 2003
Prof. Gil Rodman
Office Hours: Tu, Th 1-2p and by appointment
CIS 3040 // 813-974-3025 // gbrodman@mindspring.com
course description and objectives
This course begins from two basic premises. The first of these is that the US remains a culture, not merely obsessed with race, but riddled with corrosive racial prejudices and debilitating institutional racism. Whatever advances we have made over the years with respect to racial politics, we remain a nation deeply divided along racial faultlines, and race continues to be a form of difference that matters tremendously when it comes to the distribution of education, jobs, housing, healthcare, justice, and political power.
The second premise that undergirds this course is that race is a concept rooted in culture, rather than nature: i.e., that the racial categories into which the population is divided -- whether formally (e.g., by government agencies such as the Census Bureau) or informally (e.g., by the everyday practices and discourse of ordinary people) -- are social constructs, and that there is no scientific, genetic, or biological basis for separating the world's population into different racial groups. As natural as racial categories might seem, they are always conjuncturally specific, shifting in significant ways from one historical moment (or one cultural context) to the next.
Starting from these premises, we will take a cultural-studies-flavored approach to questions of racial identity and media representations in the US. In particular, we will look at
- cultural texts, sites, and practices where the existing racial categories mix, merge, and/or rub up against each other in ways that unsettle the naturalness of race and
- the multiple ways that popular media discourses about race actively work to deny the possibility of identities that blend, blur, and/or cross over the existing racial categories.
Given the fraught nature of our subject matter this semester -- US racial politics are often ugly, divisive, and emotionally disturbing -- this will probably not be a "feel good" course, and it's quite possible that, at one point or another this semester, all of us (myself included) will come away from our discussions feeling frustrated, upset, and/or a bit raw. Even when our conversations -- either in class and online -- are highly charged, however, I expect all of our interactions with each other to be characterized by mutual respect.
required books
- Paul Beatty, The White Boy Shuffle
- Todd Boyd, Am I Black Enough for You?
- Toi Derricotte, The Black Notebooks
- Richard Dyer, White
- Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters
- Paul Gilroy, Against Race
- Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic
- Herman Gray, Watching Race
- bell hooks, Reel to Real
- Eric Lott, Love and Theft
- Mark Anthony Neal, What the Music Said
- Danzy Senna, Caucasia
- Patricia J. Williams, Seeing a Color-Blind Future
All titles are available at Inkwood Books, 216 S. Armenia, Tampa (253-2638, inkwoodbks@aol.com).
N.B.: Knowing that some people prefer to acquire their books elsewhere, Inkwood has only ordered a full complement of the Williams title (which we're reading first). They will have a smaller supply of the remaining titles on hand at the start of the semester, and they're happy to order more (as need be) to meet actual demand.
Blackboard Discussion Board participation
The main purpose of the Discussion Board is to serve as an informal space that's always available for discussion of the issues raised by the assigned readings and our class sessions. I expect everyone to participate in these discussions on a more or less regular basis. While there's no simple formula that determines what counts as "enough" participation, a respectable goal to aim for is about 250 words/week. If the bulk of your contributions consist of one-line replies to other people's longer messages (e.g., "Well said, Pat. Thanks.") or if more than 7-10 days go by between your posts, you're probably not pulling your weight here.
There are many, many ways to contribute meaningfully to our online discussions. A partial list of the possibilities includes:
- questions you may have about the readings
- thoughts on / responses to / critiques of the assigned readings
- follow-up comments on / additions to our in-class conversations
- replies to other people's Discussion Board posts
Additionally, the Blackboard site may occasionally be used to make important course-related announcements (e.g., "please add the collected works of Angela Davis and Cornel West to next Thursday's reading") or to pass word on about other topics that may be of interest to the class (e.g., calls for papers, upcoming conferences, recently published articles and books, etc.). So check the site frequently.
written work
There are two major written assignments for this course:
(1) An annotated bibliography of scholarly work on media, race, and identity. To help pace you on this project, there are four due dates -- 6 February, 6 March, 3 April, 1 May -- and you should turn in a roughly 25% of your annotations by each of these deadlines.
(2) A scholarly research paper on some significant issue connected to media, race, and identity. Ideally, this paper will be suitable for submission to a scholarly journal and/or conference. Proposed paper topics are due by 13 February. The actual paper is due by 17 April. We will workshop the group's papers in class on 1 May.
More details about both assignments will be made available on separate handouts.
grading policy
Those of you who've had classes with me before know that I'm not a big fan of grades at the graduate level. Presumably, you're here because you have a genuine desire to learn something about media, race, and identity . . . and I would rather have you devote your energies to engaging fully with the issues and arguments at hand than to sweating over the question of whether you'll be able to turn an 87 into a 90. As far as I'm concerned, then, if you show up for class consistently, participate in our discussions (both in class and online) on a regular basis, and complete the written assignments in satisfactory and timely fashion, you should get an A. That being said, in cases where people are clearly slacking off, I reserve the right to go deeper into the alphabet when I fill out my final grade sheet (and I've actually done so in the past). Under such unfortunate circumstances, your grade will be calculated as follows:
| Attendance/participation |
|
10% |
| Blackboard Discussion Board participation |
|
10% |
| Annotated bibliography |
|
20% |
| Research paper |
|
60% |
Final course grades will not use the plus/minus grading system.
9 January
no reading
16 January
Patricia J. Williams, Seeing a Color-Blind Future
Lawrence Grossberg, "Cultural Studies: What's in a Name (One More Time)"
Stuart Hall, "Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities"
Stuart Hall, "Race, Culture, and Communications: Looking Backward and Forward at Cultural Studies"
Lauren Berlant, "The Face of America and the State of Emergency"
23 January
Eric Lott, Love and Theft
30 January
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic
6 February
Richard Dyer, White
Bibliography (part 1) due
13 February
Herman Gray, Watching Race
Research paper topic due
20 February
bell hooks, Reel to Real
27 February
Mark Anthony Neal, What the Music Said
6 March
Todd Boyd, Am I Black Enough for You?
Bibliography (part 2) due
13 March
Spring Break -- NO CLASS
20 March
Danzy Senna, Caucasia
27 March
Paul Beatty, The White Boy Shuffle
3 April
Toi Derricotte, The Black Notebooks
Bibliography (part 3) due
10 April
Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters
17 April
Paul Gilroy, Against Race (pp. 1-176)
Research paper due
24 April
Paul Gilroy, Against Race (pp. 177-356)
1 May
Research paper workshop
Bibliography (part 4) due