ANTH1914W
ANTH 1914W - From "O Brother Where Art Thou?" to "12 Years a Slave": American Cinema and American Roots Music (3 Cr.) Diversity and Soc Justice US, Writing Intensive, Freshman Seminar
Anthropology (10950)
TCLA - College of Liberal Arts
ANTH 1914W - From "O Brother Where Art Thou?" to "12 Years a Slave": American Cinema and American Roots Music (3 Cr.) Diversity and Soc Justice US, Writing Intensive, Freshman Seminar
Course description
This seminar focuses on the ways in which popular culture (movies and other visual media) presents and comments upon southern American "roots" music. Although the music had deep roots in the American past, it also underwent dramatic transformations with the coming of industrial capitalism to the South and as a result of the commercial recording process itself, especially in the 1920s. This music continues to shape popular music today, and it continues to be a focus of cinematic attention. In this seminar we will focus on three sets of issues. First, we will consider the music in terms of the historical contexts that shaped it. Second, we will consider the question of how popular cinema and documentary films interpret (in sometimes problematic ways) this music, and what the politics of those representations might be. Third, we will attempt to understand musical genres and the movies in which they are featured in relation to the production of race, class and gender, and the experience of inequality in the United States.
Minimum credits
3
Maximum credits
3
Is this course repeatable?
No
Grading basis
A-F - A-F Grade Basis
Discussion
Requirements
001475
This course fulfills the following Liberal Education requirement(s)
Race, Power, and Justice in the United States
Fulfills the writing intensive requirement?
Yes
Typically offered term(s)
Periodic Fall