AMIN 3402 is also offered in Spring 2025
AMIN 3402 is also offered in Spring 2024
AMIN 3402 is also offered in Fall 2021
Fall 2018 | AMIN 3402 Section 001: American Indians and the Cinema (34685)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- A-F or Audit
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Class Attributes:
UMNTC Liberal Education Requirement
- Times and Locations:
Regular Academic Session
UMTC, East Bank
Nicholson Hall 145
- Enrollment Status:
Open (24 of 35 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- Representations of American Indians in film, historically/contemporarily. What such representations assert about Native experience and cultural viability. What they reflect about particular relationships of power.
- Class Description:
- In American Indians and the Cinema, we examine historical and contemporary representations of American Indian peoples in film, the power inequities reflected in those representations, and American Indian resistance to those representations. We will ask ourselves how have particular images of Indians in the movies served the interests of an American nationalist agenda rather than the interests of Native individuals and nations themselves. The course aims to make such questions of the power of representation clear to students and offers the tools to engage in a critique of conventional cultural representations of American Indian people, as well as, more critically, exposing them to an emerging body of work by American Indian filmmakers asserting their own authority in controlling their images and offering their stories to the viewing world at large. The course addresses ideas of diversity and social justice in the U.S. by exploring how films by American Indian filmmakers offer a differing idea of what American Indian experience has been and is--and ultimately examines the development of an American Indian "aesthetic" by Native filmmakers that is grounded in the historical and ongoing cultural viability of Native peoples. Students taking the course focus on developing a critical vocabulary for understanding both what film is and how it has historically represented American Indian peoples as well as exploring how these representations have changed, or not, in response to changing historical/social contexts. Through examinations and papers students will engage in the task of articulating their critical insights concerning the films and the contexts they emerge from and reflect on.
- Class Format:
- 10% Lecture
40% Film/Video
40% Discussion
10% Student Presentations
- Workload:
- 50 Pages Reading Per Week
20 Pages Writing Per Term
2 Exam(s)
2 Paper(s)
2 Special Project(s)
Other Workload: Special projects include two short videos to be made by students, individually and in pairs. No technical experience is necessary to make these videos!
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/34685/1189
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 1 November 2012
ClassInfo Links - Fall 2018 American Indian Studies Classes