COML 1110 - FWS: Seeing (beyond) Race

Fall, Spring. 3 credits. Letter grades only.

First-Year Writing Seminar.

Staff.

“[T]he Other fixes me with his gaze”, so writes Fanon about being seen as a black man. Our course will start from the working premise that racial difference is constructed through the act of looking and being seen. We will consider how different peoples have been subjected to racial stereotypes and how image impacts power relations in real life. We will also examine the ways artists and intellectuals speak back to oppressive representational regimes through creative self-expression and critical analysis. Our texts may include essays by Stuart Hall, accounts of ethno-tourism, Marlon Riggs’s documentary, Beyoncé’s Lemonade, and David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly. Through writing personal reflection, critical essays, and a research paper, students will learn to analyze visual texts and the social power of image.