Race/Class/Gender in Borderlands Film and Media

This class will investigate representations of borders and border crossings in (US-)American film and media, especially representations of US-Mexican borderlands. Students will be familiarized with selected theoretical readings to help them critically analyze our corpus mainly consisting of films and selected examples from TV series and other media forms. Focusing on the analysis of representations of borders, border conflicts and border crossings, we will investigate in how far intersections of race, class, gender and other factors are connected to dominant/hegemonic discourses or counter-narratives and how (US) American media include or exclude / represent or misrepresent certain groups. We will investigate how media productions are shaped by current discourses in society while they at the same time add to these discourses. Our corpus will include, among others, the movies No Country for Old Men (2007, dir. Joel and Ethan Coen), The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005, dir. Tommy Lee Jones, written by Guillermo Arriaga) and Babel (2006, dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu, written Guillermo Arriaga). 

Readings/materials: A selection of relevant secondary sources will be made available in electronic form. We will discuss access options for the films in the first session. 

Course requirements: Completion of reading assignments, a short (oral) presentation, and a short written assignment at the end of the course. Students are required to watch (excerpts) from movies etc. in advance of the sessions in which we discuss them. Regular attendance and active participation in seminar discussions is expected. 

10 T4EU students 

Duration: 17.10.24 to 06.02.25

Time: 12:15 pm.-1:45 pm.

ECTS: 3

Application Course (AC): Students apply knowledge to gain experience and generate societal transformative impact in limited scope. 

Lecturer: Bärbel Schlimbach