Black Feminist Multimedia | Women's Studies 185 MY
Spring 2006, Tuesdays 2pm-5pm, Kerr Hall Digital Editing Lab
Professor Mireille Miller-Young

Required Texts:

1. Amelia Jones, editor, The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader (New York: Routledge, 2003), available from the UCSB Bookstore.

2. Deborah Willis and Carla Williams, The Black Female Body: A Photographic History (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 2002), available from the UCSB bookstore.

Schedule of Readings:

Week 1:
Introduction to the class

Week 2:
Willis|Williams, Black Female Body, Part 1: “Colonial Conquest”

Jones, Feminism and Visual Culture Reader:
Sander Gilman: “Black Bodies, White Bodies” (19) (skim)
John Berger: “From Ways of Seeing” (7)

Web Reading:
Patricia Hill Collins, “The Sexual Politics of Black Womanhood” http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/grhf/WoC/sexualities/collins8.html

Week 3:
Self Portrait 1 minute video due***

Jones, Feminism and Visual Culture Reader:
Trinh T. Minh-ha: “Difference: A Special Third World Women Issue” (20)
Coco Fusco: “The Other Intercultural Performance” (24)

Week 4:
Jones, Feminism and Visual Culture Reader:
Donna Haraway: “ A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” (53) (skim)
Jennifer Gonzalez: “The Appended Subject: Race and Identity As Digital Assemblage” (61)
Maria Fernandez: “Postcolonial Media Theory” (57)

Web Reading:
Cruella de Ville, "Paradigms and Perversions: A Woman's Place in
Cyberspace," Brillo Magazine. http://www.brillomag.net/No1/letter.htm

Week 5:
Work on Self Portrait Video Projects, No readings.

Week 6:
***Self Portrait 3-5 minute video and Paper Due, In class Screening***

Willis|Williams, Black Female Body, Part 2: The Cultural Body

Jones, Feminism and Visual Culture Reader:
bell hooks: “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators” (14)
Ann duCille: “Black Barbie and the Deep Play of Difference” (38)

Week 7:
Feminist Doc Plan Due, In class website work with Dreamweaver***

Willis|Williams, Black Female Body, Part 3: The Body Beautiful

Jones, Feminism and Visual Culture Reader:
Judith Wilson: “One Way or Another: Black Feminist Visual Theory” (5)
Lorraine O’Grady: “Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity” (21)
The Guerrilla Girls: “Introduction and Conclusion to the Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art" (39)

Web Reading:
Carla Williams, http://www.carlagirl.net

Week 8:
Bring in Captured Video for Feminist Doc****

Jones, Feminism and Visual Culture Reader:
Adrian Piper, “The Triple Negation of the Colored Women Artists” (28)

Handout:
On Black Women Artists...(to be given out in class)

Web reading:
Mireille Miller-Young, “Because I’m Sexy and Smart! Black Women
Webmistresses Hack Cyberporn,"
http://www.cut-up.com/news/detail.php?sid=416

Week 9:

***In class web design work with Dreamweaver***

Willis|Williams, Black Female Body,
Conclusion: Reclaiming Bodies and Images

Jones, Feminism and Visual Culture Reader:
Lisa Bloom, "Creating Transnational Women's Art Networks" (3)
Faith Wilding: “Next Bodies” (5)
Sadie Plant “Feminisations: Reflections on Women and Virtual Reality" (58)

Optional Web Reading:
Anna Everett, “On Cyberfeminism and Cyberwomanism:
High Tech Mediations on Feminisms’ Discontents,”
Signs vol. 3, no. 1, 2004.
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/SIGNS/journal/issues/v30n1/300109/300109.html

Week 10:

***Students bring their first rough cut of Feminist Doc Video***

Show and Tell, students present websites, blogs, and give an overview of their work in the class.

Week 11 (Finals):

Final Video Projects Due and Screening