Romero, Channette
MW 3 :00 PM
Park Hall 126
ENGL 4895: Indigenous Film and Digital Media
This class will interrogate the ways that global Indigenous writers, filmmakers, and artists use film and digital media to articulate Indigenous stories, and to respond to and attempt to correct false cinematic stereotypes. We will critically explore a variety of different media formats (fictional and documentary films, animation, multimedia art installations, music videos, etc.) from tribal peoples throughout the world, especially from North America, the Arctic, New Zealand, and Australia. We will examine the diverse ways that contemporary Native, First Nations, and Aboriginal artists assert existing Indigenous presence and connections to tribal homelands, in the face of mainstream media traditions that historically render them absent and always-already-dead. Topics for discussion will include (among others) the relationship between digital media and tribal traditions, especially storytelling traditions; the politics of racial representation; visual sovereignty; spectatorship; cinema and social justice including language preservation; and the ethics of film production.