MCC-UE 1025
#BLACK LIVES MATTER:
RACE, MEDIA, AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
Tu/Th 2:00PM – 3.15 PM / Bldg: WAVE 367Instructor: Nicholas D Mirzoeff
E:
Cell: 646 673 2650
Web: https://wp.nyu.edu/howtoseetheworld/
This class concentrates on the use of media by and for the Black Lives Matter movement. We will historicize the movement by examining Reconstruction, Civil Rights and the Black Power movement. We will contextualize it by learning about the prison-industrial complex and the New Jim Crow. At the heart of our discussion will be media in and for the movement. We'll look at performative resistance like Hands Up, Don't Shoot;Die Ins; and the role of social media in shaping resistance. We will get to the heart of what happened in Ferguson by reading the grand jury transcripts. We'll look at how #BlackLivesMatter has challenged art, cinema and museums. And we'll consider what actions to take next.
Honor Code: read this part!
This is a big deal subject. No one has to be here, so if you register, remember that someone else would like to be in the class who can’t be. You need to commit not just to attending all sessions, barring infectious illness and serious personal situations (notes required), but also to engaging with the materials every week. It’s too important a subject for people who do not want to participate both verbally and in writing every week. Silent presence in the room does not constitute attendance. Remaining in the class past the first week indicates your acceptance of these conditions. As this is an honor code, there will not be endless reminders in class but not maintaining these conditions will lead to grade penalties.
Class methods
The class alternates between lecture format and discussion of readings with the discussions held on Tuesday shaping the lecture on Thursday. Exercises and reading reports in groups are a key part of the class. Students will be divided into four groups and each will do two report backs on the reading/viewing for that week (look at the syllabus for details) and ask the rest of the class to work through the material, whether in small group discussion, whole class discussion, writing exercises or whatever other format you decide.
Outcomes
In addition to the participation requirements listed in the syllabus, graded pass/fail, there are two major requirements. A short paper is due on March 2, reflecting on how the historical section of the course has changed your understanding of #BlackLivesMatter (detailed assignment to follow).
The primary assignment is a collective publication on the themes of the seminar. This might be in PDF or online. Each group will write a section of the publication, collectively or individually. The publication is a media activist project around the themes of the seminar. Groups present their approach to their section and then we will combine the finished projects to make a collective outcome for the class.
Assessment is designed around consistent participation and engagement. A successful student doesn’t always have the ‘right’ answer, s/he tries their best. Please see the separate document “Policies” for more information on grading policy.
Attendance 10%
Pass/fail exercises 20%
Participation 20%
Short paper 20%
Publication participation and production: 10% proposal and presentation 20% final product
Resources
Beginning with the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, scholars and activists have created a range of extensive booklists and syllabi that will give you access to any further reading you might want:
Black Panther syllabus and booklist: http://www.aaihs.org/blackpanthersyllabus/
Black Lives Matter and Charleston syllabus and booklist: http://www.aaihs.org/resources/charlestonsyllabus/
Ferguson syllabus and reading: http://guides.lasalle.edu/c.php?g=439814&p=2997168
Search #Fergusonsyllabus
CLASS MEETINGS
Please note: subject to change if/when relevant events occur (by consultation and consensus)
Introductions and commitments
Week 1
T 1/24: Introductions
Th 26:
Race and/in History
Many Thousands Gone
Week 2
T 31:
Whiteness
We’ll begin working in groups today: bring in a written 3 paragraph response based on the readings
Readings: John Metta “I, Racist” PDF .
WEB Du Bois, “The Souls of White Folk.”
Response question: “Do you consider yourself white? What is your relationship to whiteness? What is whiteness?
Th 2 Feb
no class: Visit the African Burial Ground
First floor, Ted Weiss Federal Building at 290 Broadway in Lower Manhattan. Allow time to get through security
Week 3
T Feb 7
Bring in a written response to the African Burial Ground to share and turn in (pass/fail)
Th Feb 9
Viewing: 13th (dir. Ava DuVernay)
Week 4
T Feb 14
Group One
What is the importance of slavery to our understanding of racism and capitalism today?
Readings:
CLR James, from The Black Jacobins {PDF on NYU classes}
Sven Beckert “Slavery and Capitalism,” Chronicle of Higher Education http://m.chronicle.com/article/SlaveryCapitalism/150787/
Ta Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,” http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
Black Citizenship in America
Th Feb 16
Capitalism, slavery and reparations
Week 5
T Feb 21
Group Two
What does it mean to be a citizen in Rankine’s work? What is her understanding of blackness? What can we learn from how she approaches these fundamental issues?
Claudia Rankine, “The Condition of Black Life is One of Mourning, “ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/22/magazine/the-condition-of-black-life-is-one-of-mourning.html?_r=0
Claudia Rankine, Citizen
Bring written responses to class to share and turn in (pass/fail)
Abolition I: equality
The work of Black historians suggests that slavery was fundamental to modernity and that the enslaved freed themselves, rather than being set free. How does this approach change your understanding of Black life in the United States? What did abolition look like, then and since?
Th Feb 23: The Visual Culture of Reconstruction
Readings:
Abolition photography: posted on NYU Classes
Contrast with DW Griffith Birth of a Nation (1915) https://youtu.be/8uuCMA-yE64 (Warning: intensely racist)
Further information on Birth of a Nation: https://chnm.gmu.edu/episodes/the-birth-of-a-nation-and-black-protest/
And Nate Parker, Birth of a Nation 2016
Abolition II: freedom under the law
How do we understand the Civil Rights Movement today? This section concentrates on the sense of what remained to be done after the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and the hopes for more than just legal freedom.
Tu Feb 28
Group Three
Where Do We Go From Here?
In this meeting, we’ll read and discuss two chapters of Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1967 book of this title and his shift toward a strategy of opposing racism, militarism and materialism.
Read or listen to Dr. King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech: http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_beyond_vietnam/
Th Mar 2
The Inseparable Triplets and Black Power
Abolition III: The Next American Revolution
Many Black Lives Matter activists have presented the movement as the third stage of abolition: justice.
T Mar 7
Group Four
Watch Grace Lee, American Revolutionary and read Grace Lee Boggs The Next American Revolution
Answer one of the questions that Boggs posed for us here:
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/climate-solutions/commentary-the-fierce-urgency-of-now
Th Mar 9
Detroit from Fordism to the Trump Election
Short responses to Abolition I and II due today (grace period till March 13).
Spring Break!! March 11-18
The New Jim Crow
T Mar 21
Group One
What is the New Jim Crow?
Reading Michele Alexander: The New Jim Crow.
Th Mar 23
Mass incarceration as government
#Michael Brown Grand Jury Hearings
T Mar 28 and Th Mar 30
After the murder of Michael Brown on August 9, 2014 Ferguson MO, St. Louis prosecutor Robert McCulloch undertook to release all the materials from the grand jury hearings. Dividing the materials across the class, we will undertake a collective reading. What can we learn from this archive? What questions remain?
Materials
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/11/25/us/evidence-released-in-michael-brown-case.html?&hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=a-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=2
Week 11
T Apr 4
Group Two
Black Lives Matter
How did Black Lives Matter come together and form its key actions?
Sources:
#Ferguson Activism
The new activist movement began in Ferguson that changes the face and style of activism in the United States. This week we take the measure of what has happened there and continues.
Alicia Garza, “A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement” http://thefeministwire.com/2014/10/blacklivesmatter-2/
Ferguson context
Sarah Kendzior, “Why Ferguson has been in a state of emergency for years”
http://qz.com/301180/why-ferguson-has-been-in-a-state-of-emergency-for-years/
and “Ferguson Inc.” http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/03/ferguson-inc-115765.html
Emmett Rensin : “After The Train Leaves Town,” https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/train-leaves-town/
Interview with Rev. Sekou: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/32039-rev-sekou-on-today-s-civil-rights-leaders-i-take-my-orders-from-23-year-old-queer-women
Deray McKesson, “Ferguson and Beyond.” http://bit.ly/1MeavrK
--Hands Up, Don’t Shoot
From this: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hands-up-20140813-story.html
to this: Jonathan Capehart, “Hands Up Don’t Shoot Was Built on a Lie,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/03/16/lesson-learned-from-the-shooting-of-michael-brown/
Cristian Farias, “Hands Up Don’t Shoot Was Not Built on a Lie,” http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121322/doj-ferguson-report-doesnt-mean-hands-dont-shoot-was-lie
--Die Ins
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/19/die-ins-demand-that-we-bear-witness-to-black-peoples-fears-that-theyll-be-next
Th Apr 6
Social Justice Activism now
Week 12
Futures and Presents
T April 11
Group Three
What kind of social change might BLM create?
Reading: Movement for Black Lives A Vision for Black Lives
https://policy.m4bl.org/
Th April 13
What is the present condition of Black Lives Matter?
Week 13
T April 18
Response: Art, Visual Culture and Performance #BlackLivesMatter
Group Four
Artists and performers have been at the forefront of #BlackLivesMatter. This week we review their work: what did you find most effective? How were you inspired?
Materials:
Respond (art exhibit): http://smackmellon.org/index.php/exhibitions/past/respond/
Flexn, Park Ave Armory (Brooklyn dance movement): https://youtu.be/8ThdDEkwSCA?list=PL7MGCoP-mG3IDspw2NtP_5dNXPvlYrRHD
Bree Newsome cutting down the Confederate flag: http://bluenationreview.com/exclusive-bree-newsome-speaks-for-the-first-time-after-courageous-act-of-civil-disobedience/
Titus Kaphar (African American painter) : http://observer.com/2015/01/titus-kaphar-talks-criminal-justice-his-time-painting-and-first-show-at-jack-shainman/
and http://www.jackshainman.com/artists/titus-kaphar/
Dread Scott (African American performance artist): http://www.dreadscott.net/
Ti-Rock Moore (white ally ): http://hyperallergic.com/222106/an-art-exhibition-featuring-michael-browns-body-has-many-people-angry/
Th April 20
Project workshop
Week 14
T April 25
#Collective Reflections
Where are we now? What has happened since the inauguration?
Th April 27
How will your group approach the publication project? During this week you should define plans and send me an outline (a paragraph).
Week 15
Project presentations
T May 2
Each group should offer a 15-20 minute presentation on how they envisage their section of the publication: co-ordination and collaboration encouraged!
Groups 1 and 2
Th May 4
Groups 3 and 4
Projects due now till May 8 latest.
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