Native American Film and Video: Performing Self-Representation Through Media

Semester and Year	FA 2011
Course Number	ARTS-UG1604
Section	001
Instructor	Amalia Cordova
Days	Fri
Time	12:30 PM - 3:15 PM
Units	4.0
Level	U
Foundation Requirement

Description

This course will study the ways that Indigenous peoples and independent Native artists in the Americas have turned to film, video, and digital arts to dispute ethnographic and Hollywood imagery, and create their own audiovisual media “from within.” We will explore notions of Third and Fourth cinema, indigenous self-representation, collective authorship, Indigenous people’s representation, in mainstream films, photography, and exhibition sites such as museums. We will research specific authors and media projects, and discuss the roles of the institutions that present this work through exhibitions, events, festivals, and publications. The course features guest lecturers and requires class viewing of films and videos that are otherwise unavailable on the market. Central readings may include Through Navajo Eyes: An Exploration in Film and Communication and Anthropology (1997), by Sol Worth and John Adair, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (1994), by Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Wiping the War Paint Off the Lens: Native American Film and Video (2001), by Beverly Singer, and Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Poetics and Politics, by Pamela Wilson and Michelle Stewart (2008). Films will include works by Victor Masayesva, Jr. (Hopi), Dante Cerano (Purepecha), Zacharias Kunuk (Inuit), and works from the Video in the Villages project in Brazil.

Syllabus

ARTS-UG1604

Course Type

Arts Workshops (ARTS-UG)