This seminar will frame the idea of black film as a visual negotiation between film as art and the discursivity of race, rather than black film as a demographic, or a genre, or a reflection of the black experience, or something bound by a representational politics of positive and negative stereotypes. Black film will be critically considered as an interdisciplinary practice that enacts a distinct visual and expressive culture alongside literature, music, art, photography, and new media. Students will consider new paradigms for genre, narrative, aesthetics, historiography, and intertextuality within this overarching concept of black film.