Book Talk by Dr. Curtis Marez (Professor, Ethnic Studies, UC San Diego) By the LA River of Babylon: Film and Race Politics on Campus
Department: Film and Media Studies
Date and Time: February 7, 2020 | 12:00 PM-2:00 PMEvent Location: HG 2341
Event Details
Drawing from the recently published University Babylon: Film and Race Politics on Campus (University of California Press, 2019), this talk presents an historical survey of how Hollywood-university collaborations have produced powerful discourses of racialized respectability. Dominant constructions of academic collegiality and merit have often been premised on distinctly white respectability politics seemingly derived from film narratives, while college films have lent glamor and the pleasures of cinematic spectacle to narratives of respectable white superiority. Together, cinematic and educational institutions have promoted a synthesis of misogyny, racial capitalism, heteropatriarchy, and deference to authority under an umbrella of white nationalist respectability. At the same time, scholars and filmmakers of color, on the margins of the University Cinematic Industrial Complex, have produced a rich cinematic culture contra racialized respectability. The talk will focus on examples from Southern California, notably UCI and USC.
Light lunch will be served