MW, 1:00 PM-2:15 PM, MJ 124
Required film screening: M, 7:00 PM-10:00 PM, SY 002
Fulfills COLL S&H Requirement
Fulfills COLL Culture Studies Requirement (List A)

Instructor: Michael Booth
E-Mail: mbooth@indiana.edu
Office: Mottier Hall 217
Phone: 855-2137

There is no more powerful position than that of being 'just' human.
The claim to power is the claim to speak for the commonality of
humanity. Raced people can't do that – they can only speak for their
race. But non-raced people can, for they do not represent the
interests of a race. The point of seeing the racing of whites is to
dislodge them/us from the position of power, with all the
inequities, oppression, privileges and sufferings in its train,
dislodging them/us by undercutting the authority with which they/we
speak and act in and on the world.

The point is to see the specificity of whiteness, even when the text
itself is not trying to show it to you, doesn't even know that it is
there to be shown.

		-- Richard Dyer, White.

Traditionally, discussions concerning race have assumed a focus on
non-white subjects. Recent generations, however, have increasingly
included reflections on whiteness itself as a category of specific
cultural existence. Since the early 90s, a growing body of
literature has emerged under the banner of "whiteness studies".
Inspired by the critiques of feminist and race scholars, this work
seeks to identify, analyze, and de-legitimize those elements of a
privileged position that all too often go unnoticed by those who
occupy it. This failure to recognize itself as a uniquely dominant
role turns out to be one of the defining characteristics of white
power. This course will concentrate on images of whiteness found in
visual media representations from the turn of the twentieth century
to the present. We will draw examples from the earliest days of
cinema to some of its most luminous texts, including Birth of a
Nation, The Jazz Singer, King Kong, Lawrence of Arabia, and Star
Wars. We will also look at genres such as melodrama, film noir, and
the contemporary action film in terms of their representations of
whiteness. While contemporary stars such as Harrison Ford and Tom
Hanks provide figures of ordinary whiteness, Mel Gibson, Bruce
Willis and Michael Douglas offer more hyperbolic models. In addition
to the critical literature that will accompany these popular texts,
we will consult the experimental films of Yvonne Rainer, Tracy
Moffatt, Isaac Julien and others. These may be compared to more
mainstream attempts to address the topic in earnest Hollywood
products such as White Man's Burden and Crash. Finally, we will look
at the comedic interventions of Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Dave
Chappelle and Margaret Cho. We will accompany this material with
readings by W.E.B. du Bois, Hazel Carby, Richard Dyer, Frantz Fanon,
Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Ruth Frankenberg, Jane Gaines, Mike Hill,
bell hooks, E. Ann Kaplan, Eric Lott, Toni Morrison, Fred Pfeil,
David Roediger, Ella Shohat, Robert Stam, Sharon Willis and others.