History and Film: Spike Lee and
the Americas
History 414, online course
Fall 2015
Dale T. Graden
www.webpages.uidaho.edu/Graden
Overview: Spike Lee has directed
films and documentaries focusing on African American history and culture. His
work has touched on important themes related to race and gender. He is one of
several directors who have focused on the experiences of Africans and African
descendents across the Americas.
Week one: August 24-30
The transatlantic slave trade
Film: Amistad
Reading (your choice)
Marcus Rediker,
The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey
of Slavery and Freedom
Dale Graden, Disease, Resistance and Lies:
The Demise of the Transatlantic Slave Trade to Brazil and Cuba
Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger
Week two: August 31-September 6
Slavery in the Americas
Film (your choice): 12 Years a
Slave; Xica da Silva (Brazilian film, 1976, online at youtube); Quilombo
(Brazilian film, 1984, online at youtube but without English subtitles); The
Last Supper (La última cena, Cuban film, 1976, online at youtube)
Reading (your choice)
Solomon Northrup,
12 Years a Slave
Eric Foner, Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden
History of the Underground Railroad
Dale Graden, From Slavery to Freedom in
Brazil: Bahia, 1835-1900
Juan Francisco Manzon and Evelyn Picon Garfield,
Autobiography of a Slave
Week three: September 7-13
World War Two
Film: Miracle at St. Anna
Reading (your choice)
Arthur E. Barbeau and Florette
Henri, The Unknown Soldiers:
African-American Troops in World War I
Handon B. Hargrove, Buffalo Soldiers in
Italy: Black Americans in World War II
Week four: September 14-20
Vietnam
Film: Platoon
Reading
Albert French,
Patches of Fire: A Story of War and
Redemption
Week five: September 21-27
The 1960s
Film: Malcolm X
Reading (your choice)
Alex Haley and
Malcolm X, Autobiography of Malcolm X
Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of
Reinvention
Michael Dyson, Making Malcolm: The Myth
and Meaning of Malcolm X
Week six: September 28-October 4
Historical legacies
Film: Bamboozled
Reading (your choice)
Derrick Bell,
Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The
Permanence of Racism
Cornel West, ed., The Radical King
Week seven: October 5-11
Urban United States
Film: Do the Right Thing
Reading (your choice)
Isabel Wilkerson,
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Week eight: October 12-18
Urban United States
Film: Clockers
Reading (your choice)
Cornel West, Race Matters
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow
Week nine: October 19-25
Urban Brazil
Film (your choice): City of God;
Tropa de Elite I; Tropa de Elite II (translated as Elite Squad I and II)
Reading (your choice)
France Winndance Twine,
Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in
Brazil
Robert M. Levine and José Carlos Sebe Bom Meihy,
The Life and Death of Carolina de Jesus
Michael George Hanchard, Racial Politics
in Contemporary Brazil
Week ten: October 26-November 1
Music
Film: Mo Better Blues
Reading (your choice)
John Szwed,
Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth
David Levering Lewis, When Harlem was
in Vogue
Steven Watson, The Harlem Renaissance:
Hub of African-American Culture, 1920-1930
Christopher Dunn, Brutality Garden:
Tropicália and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture
Week eleven: November 2-8
Sport
Film: He Got Game
Reading (your choice)
Walter LaFeber,
Michael Jordan and the New Global
Capitalism
Roger Kittleson, The Country of Football:
Soccer and the Making of Modern Brazil
Week twelve: November 9-15
Disaster
Film: When the Levees Broke (four
hour documentary, your choice of segment(s), online at youtube)
Recommended film: Beasts of the Southern Wild
Reading
Michael Dyson,
Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster
Week thirteen: November 16-22
Leaders
Film: The Liberator
Reading (your choice)
Marie Arana,
Bolívar: American Liberator
George Reid Andrews, Afro-Latin America
Thanksgiving Break
Week fourteen: November
30-December 6
Haiti
Film (your choice): The
Agronomist; The Serpent and the Rainbow
Recommended is the documentary “Égalité for All: Toussaint Louverture and the
Haitian Revolution” online at youtube
Reading (your choice)
Wade Davis,
Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of
the Haitian Zombie
Zora Neale Hurston, Tell My Horse: Voodoo
and Life in Haiti and Jamaica
Madison Smartt Bell, All Souls’ Rising: A
Novel
Laurent DuBois, Avengers of the New World:
The Story of the Haitian Revolution
Matthew J. Clavin, Toussaint Louverture
and the American Civil War: The Promise and Perils of a Second Haitian
Revolution
Paul Farmer, The Uses of Haiti
Doris Lorraine Garraway, Tree of Liberty:
Cultural Legacies of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World
Week fifteen: December 7-13
Cuba
Film (your choice): Memories of
Underdevelopment (online at youtube); I am Cuba (Russian film, 1964); Che (2008)
Reading (your choice)
María de los Reyes Castillo Bueno,
Reyíta: The Life of a Black Cuban Woman in
the Twentieth Century
Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint:
Tobacco and Sugar
Frank Andre Guridy, Forging Diaspora:
Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow
Miguel Barnet, Afro-Cuban Religions
Mark Q. Sawyer, Racial Politics in
Post-Revolutionary Cuba
Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation for All:
Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Black in Latin
America
Recommended Reading
Paula J. Massood, ed.,
The Spike Lee Reader
Course Requirements
Five (5) film reviews of one to
two pages (1-2) in length and Two (2) film/book critiques of three to four pages
(3-4) in length, for a total of seven (7)
written assignments.
If you are interested in a
particular film(s) or book(s), please let me know and we will seek to
accommodate your interests.