Theorizing Diasporic Visuality
Course Description Student Work Syllabus Faculty Profiles
Course Description
AFRS BC3110 Theorizing Diasporas / WMST BC3117 Film and Feminism
Instructors: Tina Campt and May Joseph
“Theorizing Diasporic Visuality,” is the first CCIS Critical Inquiry Lab – an innovative series of linked courses sponsored by the Consortium for Critical Interdisciplinary Studies (CCIS). This lab links Prof. Tina Campt’s Africana Studies colloquium, AFRS BC3110 Theorizing Diasporas, with May Joseph’s Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies course, WMST BC3117 Film and Feminism. Because cinematic visuality is an increasingly powerful tool for influencing public opinion across international borders, this course will train students in essential skills in visual literacy and reading, and provide fluency in the theoretical vocabularies of Diaspora Studies and feminist film theory and analysis. The Lab will use films by and about women in the quotidian conditions of the African Diaspora to teach students how gender and racial formation are lived in diaspora, and to engage the diasporic visual practices women mobilize to represent themselves. The course is structured around a Tuesday evening film series featuring African women filmmakers and presentations by filmmakers, curators, and visual artists and seminar discussion on Thursday mornings.
Student Work
“Revolution Main” is a film by Alana Faye Dreiman and Tess Sophie Skadegard Thorsen
“Harlem Snapshots” is a film by Nyimasita Kanuteh and Tess Sophie Skadegard Thorsen
“Un/Identified” is a film by Ariana Warr, Shanece Davis, and Liz Gipson
Syllabus
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
Cinematic visuality is an increasingly powerful tool influencing public opinions across international borders. Film making today involves globalizing relationships of production, consumption and distribution. However, these relationships are not innocent of power, economics, and histories of colonialization, globalization and neoliberal arrangements. The CCIS Critical Inquiry Lab, “Theorizing Diasporic Visuality,” conjoins Professor Tina Campt’s Africana Studies colloquium, AFRS 3110 – Theorizing Diasporas, with May Joseph’s WGSS course, WMST 3117 – Feminism and Film. This course seeks to train students in essential skills in visual literacy and reading, and provide fluency in the theoretical vocabularies of Diaspora Studies and feminist film theory and analysis. It uses films by and about women in the quotidian conditions of the African Diaspora to teach students how gender and racial formation are lived in diaspora, and to engage the diasporic visual practices women mobilize to represent themselves. The seminar draws on historical, anthropological, and literary approaches to develop a feminist theory of the African Diaspora. Our discussions will be propelled by the following questions:
- What are the historic conditions of women’s cinematic visuality in Africa as well as in the diaspora?
- What stories do their films tell, how are these films made, and what are the conditions of their circulation?
The Lab is structured around a Tuesday evening film series featuring African women filmmakers and presentations by filmmakers, curators, and visual artists, and seminar discussions on Thursday mornings. We will view films made by women as well as films exploring the conditions of women across the African diaspora. A guiding concept will be the theme of transnational, alternative modernities: practices, aesthetics and politics shaped through decolonization, migrancy, displacement and diaspora, through which Black women’s visuality emerges. Our objective is to grasp the transnational forces shaping diasporic African women’s visual practices through the medium of cinema; to familiarize students with contemporary feminist texts on diasporic formation; and to complicate these analyses by putting them in conversation with feminist scholarship on gender, transnationalism and globalization.
Student Learning Outcomes:
- Students will develop an awareness of the complexity and diversity of different national cinemas across the Americas, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia.
- Students will develop a thorough knowledge of the key intellectual traditions of the African Diaspora theory and feminist theories of gendered models of diasporic formation.
- Students will recognize the key role filmmakers play in the production of global history and culture through specific case studies from Britain, Senegal, Martinique, China, Phillipines, India and the U.S.
- Students will learn to speak effectively through discussions in class. They will be asked to compare and contrast the histories and cultures of different regions of the world.
- Students will conduct research and critically analyze, both in class and in assigned essays, how women film directors have variously addressed issues of gender, human rights, visuality and mobility in the formation of globalizing national identities.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
**Please note: It is our firm policy not to accept any late assignments accept for reasons of documented medical or personal emergency. Papers submitted after they are due will be returned ungraded and unread.
Class participation (Grade value: 10%) – Class attendance is mandatory. Each week, you are responsible for coming to class prepared. In other words, you will have done the readings, attended the screenings and thought critically about them in relation to one another and the broader themes of the course. Failure to attend more than two classes for reasons other than a documented medical or other emergency will jeopardize your ability to pass the course.
Think Sheets (Grade Value: 3x 10 = 30%) – Seminar participants will electronically submit (in the Courseworks dropbox) three, 3-page (double-spaced) think-sheets that synthesize the main argument of the week’s texts, comparing and contrasting their analytic models for theorizing diasporic formation in relation to the week’s film screening. Papers should also formulate a provisional argument that engages how the week’s readings build on, complicate, or depart from the theories of diaspora discussed in the previous or preceding session(s). In this way, your papers should function as cumulative ‘thinking exercises’. Think sheets should be submitted by 6pm on Wednesdays. It is your responsibility to submit these assignments on time as late postings will not be accepted.
Reception Reports (Grade Value: 30%) – This assignment requires you to review the positive and negative reception (ie., reviews and criticism) published in response to the primary written and visual texts assigned for the week’s discussion. These sessions are marked with an asterisk (*) in the Schedule of Discussions. On the basis of your research, you will give a brief 15-minute group presentation (together with two other students) of your findings that explores what you see as the key issues raised in the reception of these texts. You will be responsible for submitting individual 5-7 page papers summarizing your understanding of the reception of these works and impact of them in the field of film and diaspora studies, citing specific examples from your research. Your presentation will be graded on your level of preparation for the presentation, your knowledge of the material, and as well as the effectiveness and insightfulness of your own approach to understanding the texts.
Final Project (Grade Value: 30%) – Your final project will consist of a filmic production designed and executed with a group of 1-2 fellow students that ties together the themes examined in the seminar over the course of the semester. Accompanying your project, you will submit a 7-10 page analysis of how your project engages the theoretical concepts we have discussed in the seminar In other words, the project will require you to ‘theorize’ gendered and diasporic formation using the analytic and cinematic tools you have learned in the seminar and its diversity of written and filmic texts. You will attend ‘production workshops’ at the end of the semester that will introduce you to the cinematic editing skills you will need for the project.
References:
- George Alexander, Why We Make Movies. New York: Broadway Books, 2003. (Out of Print)
- Imruh Bakari and Mbye Cham, African Experiences of Cinema. London: British Film Institute, 1996. (AEC) (Out of Print)
- Michael Martin, Ed. Cinemas of the Black Diaspora. Detroit: Wayne State University, 1995. (CBD)
- Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall, Visual Culture: The Reader. London: SAGE, 1999. (VC)
SCHEDULE OF FILMS, READINGS AND DISCUSSIONS:
January 17: Course Introduction: Visuality, Postcoloniality and Diaspora
- Screen: Sembene Ousmane, Black Girl, (Senegal, 1966, 59 min.)
- Read: Francoise Pfaff, “Sembene: A Griot of Modern Times” in Martin, Cinemas of the Black Diaspora
- Manthia Diawara, “France’s contribution to the development of Film Production in Africa” in African Cinema: Politics and Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1992.
January 19: Diaspora, Feminism and Visuality: Baseline Conceptual Debates
- Clifford, James, “Diasporas.” Cultural Anthropology 9(3): 302-338, 1994.
- Edwards, Brent, “The Uses of Diaspora.” Social Text 66 (Spring), 45-73, 2001.
- Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” Media and Cultural Studies Keyworks
- Frantz Fanon, “The Fact of Blackness” In Visual Culture: The Reader
- Sigmund Freud, “Fetishism” In Visual Culture: The Reader
January 24: Library Research Orientation
January 26:Diasporic Articulations
- Hall, Stuart, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” In Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, Ed. Jonathan Rutherford, New York: Lawrence and Wishart, 222-237, 1990.
- Hall, Stuart. “Reconstruction Work” in “The Critical Decade: Black Photography in the 1980’s,” David Bailey and Stuart Hall (eds), Ten-8, no. 16, 106-113, 1984.
January 31: Returning the Gaze
- Screen: Julie Dash, Daughters of the Dust, (US, 1991, 112 mins.)
- Bell Hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.” Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 115-132, 1992.
- Bell Hooks, “Eating the Other” In Media and Cultural Studies, Eds. Durham and Kellner, Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 424-438, 2001.
February 2: The Black Atlantic: Limits and Possibilities*
- Gilroy, Paul, “The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity.” In The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, pp. 1-71. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
- Brown, Jacqueline Nassy, “Black Liverpool, Black America, and the Gendering of Diasporic Space.” Cultural Anthropology 13(3): 291-325, 1998.
February 7: Trans-Pacific Exchanges: Framing Women’s Bodies
Film Screening and Discussion, 6-8:30 PM
Guest Speaker: Joanne Cheng, Golden Lotus, (China, 2006, 59 mins.)
February 9: Diaspora and Feminist Transnationalism*
- Hall, Stuart, “When Was the ‘Post-Colonial’? Thinking at the Limit.” In The Postcolonial Question, L. Curti and I. Chambers (Eds.), London and New York: Routledge, 1996.
- Grewal, Inderpal and Caren Kaplan, “Introduction: Transnational Feminist Practices and Questions of Postmodernity.” In Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices, pp. 1-35. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994.
- Grewal, Inderpal and Caren Kaplan, “Global Identities: Theorizing Transnational Studies of Sexuality.” GLQ 7(4): 663-679, 2001.
February 14: Diasporic Articulations: Self-Determination
- Screen: Euzhan Palcy, Sugar Cane Alley, (Martinique, 1984, 107 min.)
- Read: Euzhan Palcy, “Directors Notes.” In Why We Make Movies, Ed. George Alexander.
- Julie Dash, “Directors Notes.” In Why We Make Movies, Ed. George Alexander.
February 16: Diaspora and the Gender of Mobility I*
- Jacqueline Rose, “Sexuality in the Field of Vision” In Visual Culture: The Reader
- Homi K. Bhabha, “The Other Question: The Stereotype and Colonial Discourse” In VC
February 21: Reframing Visuality and the Africa Diaspora
Talk and Discussion 6-8 PM
Guest Speaker: Mora Beauchamp-Byrd, “Curatorial Practice and the Art of the African Diaspora”
23 February Diaspora and the Gender of Mobility II (*)
- Carby, Hazel, “The Sexual Politics of Women’s Blues.” In Cultures in Babylon: Black Britain and African America, New York: Verso, 7-39, 1999.
- Brown, Jacqueline Nassy, “Diaspora and its Discontents: A Trilogy.” In Dropping Anchor, Setting Sail: Geographies of Race in Black Liverpool, 97-128. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005.
- Stephens, Michelle, “The Isles and Empire.” In Black Empire: The Masculine Global Imaginary of Caribbean Intellectuals in the United States, 1914-1962. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.
February 28: Diaspora and Human Rights
- Screen: Pratibha Parmar, Warrior Marks, (UK, 1993, 54 mins.)
- Pratibha Parmar, “That Moment of Emergence” In Feminism and Film. London: OUP, 2000.
- Tracy Prince and Ann Kaplan, “Part Six: National and Cultural Montages” In Women Filmmakers: Refocusing, 284-311. Toronto: UBC Press, 2003.
March 1: Diasporic Visualities*
- Farida Ayari, “Images of Women” In AEC.
- Anne Mungai, “Responsibility and Freedom of Expression” In AEC.
- Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike, “Reclaiming Images of Women” In AEC.
- Sheila Petty, “Black African Feminist Film-Making? In AEC.
March 6: The Diasporic Lens of Memory
Talk and Discussion 6-8 PM
Guest Speaker: Allan de Souza
March 8: Ethnography and Diaspora
Film Screening and Discussion 9-11 AM
Guest Speaker: Nandini Sikand, Soma Girls, (India, 2009.)
March 13-15: Spring Break – No Class
March 20: Exile
- Screen: Isaac Julien, “Looking for Langston”
- Read: Kobena Mercer, “Reading Racial Fetishism: The Photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe” Visual Culture
March 22: Other Diasporas*
- Brah, Avtar, “Introduction,” “Questions of ‘Difference’ and Global Feminisms,” and “Diaspora, Border, and Transnational Identities.” In Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities, pp. 1-16, 84-94, 178-210. New York: Routledge, 1996.
- Hesse, Barnor, “Diasporicity: Black Britain’s Post-Colonial Formations.” In Un/Settled Multiculturalisms: Diasporas, Entanglements, Transruptions. London: Zed Books, 2000.
March 27: Feminist Ethnography and Minor Histories
Film Screening and Discussion 6-8 PM
Guest Speaker: Angel Shaw, Nailed, (Phillipines/US, 1992, 50 mins.)
29 March Queer Diasporas (*)
- Gopinath, Gayatri, “Nostalgia, Desire, Diaspora: South Asian Sexualities in Motion.” Positions 5: 2, 467-489, 1997.
- Fortier, Anne Marie, “Queer Diaspora.” 2001.
- Wesling, Meg, “Why Queer Diaspora,” Feminist Review 90, 30–47, 2008.
April 3: Breaking the Diasporic Frame
- Screen: Ngozi Onwurah, Welcome II The Terrordome. (90 mins. 1995, Nigeria.)
April 5: Race, Gender, Globalization (*)
- Freeman, Carla, “Is Local:Global as Feminine:Masculine? Rethinking the Gender of Globalization.” Signs 26(4):1007-1037, 2001.
- Brodkin, Karen, “Global Capitalism: What’s Race Got to Do with It?” American Ethnologist 27(2): 237-256, 2000.
April 10: Production Workshop I
April 12: African Women’s Cinematic Practices
Film Screening and Discussion 6-8 PM
Guest Speaker: Beti Ellerson, Sisters of the Screen (West Africa, USA, 2002, 73 min.)
April 17: Production Workshop II
April 19: Student Project Conferences
April 24: Student Presentations
April 26: Student Presentations
Faculty Profiles
Tina Campt is Claire Tow and Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Africana and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women. | Full Faculty Profile
May Joseph is Professor of Social Science and Cultural Studies at Pratt Institute. | Full Faculty Profile
Image Credit: Sugar Cane Alley, directed by Euzhan Palcy, 1983.