Comments: This course should result in students having grown academically in terms of both knowledge and skill; the student should be more prepared to participate meaningfully in the pluralistic society; the student should have an enhanced sense of integrity.

Our intention is that any student admitted to Seaver College should be able to profit from taking this course. However, because of the upper division nature of this course, and the rigorous expectations that presume an established base of successful college work, the course will be limited to students who have already completed at least forty units.

While we are open to any student taking this course, we hope to have a balance between African-American students and non-African American students. We think this balance will enhance the realization of the course objectives, particularly the concern about becoming "bifocal." We presume that students in any of our classes, but perhaps particularly in this class, will be open, honest, searching, appreciative of differences, comfortable with "divergent" thinking, tolerant of ambiguity, prepared to work exceptionally hard. A prior interest in film and/or African-American issues may be helpful (but we are rash enough to think that after our class students will be keenly interested in this subject regardless of prior interests). As far as time commitment, our general rule of thumb is that you can expect to spend at least two hours outside of class for each hour in class (and that many students will spend more time than that). Also, please note than our course expectations are such that there is a wide variety of assignments. We expect that each student will find a strength that will be reinforced, and an area of former weakness that will be strengthened. When it comes to grading, the best efforts may be weighted more heavily.

Commentary on Film List: while students will be expected to read each course text carefully, we will emphasize a particular course concept during class time, particularly a concept that we believe will have wide utility in being applied to many films.

In creating our outline we were primarily concerned with the "psychology" of the order. We start with Hollywood Shuffle because it raises the primary course issue, the extent to which films promote stereotypes or reflection and self questioning. What’s Love Got to Do With It is a rare film in that it sets up its character motivations early in the film, and our text (Cowen) suggests that despite that effort of the film maker, audiences often make attribution errors in judging the motives of characters from different ethnic groups than their own. BoyZNTheHood provides an excellent focus for the DuBois’ concerns about what kind of characters should be portrayed in what we now term "African-American" films. Do the Right Thing provide opportunities to look at a films’ underlying political assumptions. Malcolm X provides excellent material for the discussion of the aims of art versus the aims of history (and the use of "artistic license"). Glory is interesting in terms of the artistic license taken in the film, and the commercial issues of changing a story to gain a wider audience. Shaft provides opportunity to consider the issue of "Blaxploitation" films, the issue of heroes, and the problems of popular culture. Say Amen, Soul Food, The Five Heartbeats, and To Sleep With Anger provide the impetus for a discussion of the role of women, the family, church and religion in African-American films and culture (and to compare and contrast it with T.S. Eliot’s essay on the role of Christianity in European Culture). A Raisin in the Sun as well as The Learning Tree are especially important for similar themes and are particularly important in the history of African-American in film. Nothing But A Man, which was recently re-released, provides an excellent opportunity to discuss the relation of the director and script to the depiction of African-American culture.

The Relationship of this Course to the Organization of Academic Pursuits: While this course benefits greatly from work done in particular academic disciplines, it claims the right to borrow from any academic discipline to better understand issues in African-American culture and African-American film. Intellectually, this course takes advantage of the distinction made by C.P. Snow, among others, about the two cultures in Academia, Science and Art. (Our scientific interest here, of course, is in "Social Science.") By taking advantage of work done in both the Arts and the Social Sciences we hope to achieve what Eisner has called a "bifocal perspective," that we will develop greater depth of perception by being able to look at our course issues from both a social scientific and an artistic framework. (Thus it makes particular sense that Holmes tends to approach this study from an artistic framework, Gose from a Social Science framework.) We also intend to extend that metaphor of "bifocal perspective" from that of science and art to a realization of the benefits of being able to see the sometimes disparate perspectives of African-Americans and Euro-Americans (but let us emphasize here that the Rokeach study of values actually finds that White Americans and African-Americans are virtually identical in their basic value orientations).