The Blackface Syllabus

Western Carolina University, English 463, Spring 2019

To quote Paul Bove in the chapter on “Discourse” in Critical Terms for Literary Study, discourses “produce knowledge about humans and their society,” and an analysis of discourse aims to “describe the surface linkages between power, knowledge, institutions, intellectuals, the control of populations, and the modern state” as these intersect in systems of thought, and as represented in texts (55–56). What does the above passage mean? We come to an understanding of specific circumstances, peoples, events, and cultures through the media and through art. The narrative that we construct — and that we challenge — is the result of multiple, often contradictory, ways of reading events.

For this project, we, as a class, constructed a syllabus about a specific resistance event in order to analyze and contextualize the discourse generated by and about the event. For this assignment, students focused on the U.S.’s history of blackface as that history informs and shapes our country’s current debates about race, discrimination, contemporary politics, and social evolution.

Contents:

Part 1: History of Blackface in the U.S.

Civil War (relation to blackface) (Emalee Money)

Minstrel Shows (Callie Powell)

Jim Crow (Kaitlin Fisher)

Birth of a Nation (Foster Dalmas)

Al Jolson (Libby Bradley)

Part 2: The Discourse of Blackface in the U.S.

Intersectionality (Gabriel Lugo)

Halloween (Haylee Wilkie)

Blackfishing (Erica N. McCurdy)

Appropriation of Black Culture (Lowery Messer)

“This is America” video (Gabe McCoy)

Hollywood (Charlotte Hambright)

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