2009 Fall AAAS 132-01
Bulletin Course Description The production and circulation of African American popular cultural forms including, but not limited to, popular literature, music, film, television, and art in the twentieth century. The ways in which African American popular culture may reflect the particular values and ethos of African Americans and the larger American society. Topics may include black cinema, blues and jazz music, black nationalism, hip hop, black social movements, blacks and sports culture, popular dance, and the cultural history of black style. Instructor: Lubiano, Wallace, and staff
(Instructor named in bulletin description above may not be current. For current instructor, see listing below.)
Title SPIKE LEE & NEW BLK AESTHETIC Department AAAS Course Number 2009 Fall 132 Section Number 01 Primary Instructor Neal,Mark A Prerequisites
Synopsis of course content
Filmmaker and social critic Spike Lee, was at the center of a generation of black artists and thinkers that emerged in the late 1980s, including musician Vernon Reid, critic Greg Tate, curator Thelma Golden, scholar bell hooks, music mogul Russell Simmons, writer and critic Lisa Jones and
novelist Trey Ellis. It was Ellis that coined the term the "New Black
Aesthetic" to describe the work of this generation of black cultural workers-an aesthetic in which race or rather "blackness" was displaced as the primary aesthetic concern, and issues as divers e as class, gender, sexuality and region more prominently figured in the production of a black
aesthetic. This movement was a counter to the focus of the Black Arts Movement on the 1960s, as well as an attempt to complicate black identity in an era when "blackness" was visible in an historically unprecedented manner.
"Spike Lee and the New Black Aesthetic" will use the films of Spike Lee as an entry into this "New Black Aesthetic."
Textbooks
Platitudes by Trey Ellis
Bullet Proof Diva by Lisa Jones
The Spike Lee Reader edited by Paula Massood
Fight the Power! The Spike Lee Reader edited by Janice D. Hamlet and Robin
R. Means Coleman
Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic by Mark
Anthony Neal
Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics by bell hooks
In Search of the Black Fantastic: Politics and Popular Culture in the
Post-Civil Rights Era by Richard Iton
Additional Information
Possible Films *Note: film screenings will be arranged outside of class time
She's Gotta Have it (1986)
School Daze (1988)
Do the Right Thing (1989)
Mo Betta' Blues (1990)
Malcolm X (1992)
Crooklyn (1994)
Clockers (1995)
Get On the Bus (1996)
Bamboozled (2000)
A Huey P. Newton Story (2001)
