Honors College 222H - American Portraits

This course examines portrayals of ethnic identities in contemporary popular culture. The definition of ethnicity has moved well beyond the description of a group of individuals with a shared history or cultural background. While most agree that Italian American, Jewish, Asian Indian, Chinese American, American Indian, and Japanese American are ethnicities, others believe whiteness is an ethnicity, and some define sexual orientation as similar to an ethnicity. We will begin with the presumption that depictions of ethnicity reflect timely debates about language, immigration, and citizenship that go to the heart of what it means to be an American today. We will investigate ethnicity in film and television and also examine online social communication as a research source for information about ethnic communities. We will compare historical and contemporary ethnic stereotypes; we will explore how interdisciplinary perspectives on ethnicity are developed in media portrayals; and we will contrast scholarly and alternative sources to assess what depictions of ethnicity can tell us about being part of a community. (Gen. Ed. SB, DU)

Open to Commonwealth Honors College Students only. Cinema and Society 1959 - 2016

This seminar examines social and historical themes in modern cinema in the United States from the 1959 to the present. Focusing on the dramatic feature film as a socially symbolic medium and as an art form, the course explores how American cinema has addressed social realities and cultural myths and fantasies informing and shaping contemporary life.

The diverse portraits of society seen in the course's films address a range of issues: socioeconomic class, wealth, poverty, gender roles, ethnic identities, family dynamics, sexuality, political power, alienation, violence and racism, as well as timeless existential realities of human experience - growing up, growing old, love and death.