AFRO1911: Blackness and Reality Television

Many critics date the summer of 2000, when Survivor and Big Brother quickly became ratings juggernauts, as the beginning of the contemporary reality television boom. Within a few short years, shows like College Hill and America’s Next Top Model began pushing the genre to centralize the experiences of black cast members and, today, reality shows that feature solely or predominately black casts are among the most successful of the genre. For some people, the proliferation of reality television and the roles black people have played in it has been welcome, while for others it has been a major cause for concern, particularly given the complex history of black representation in U.S. public culture. In this course, we will consider what is at stake in the cultural battles over reality television and the fraught history of black media representation. The final six weeks of the course will be dedicated to a reality television-style competition in which students will be expected to work in groups.

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