Alternative Gazes: Looking with the Other in Film and Literature

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Gazes are gravitational forces. They can erect and deconstruct identities, ideologies, and geography. This course investigates the ideological tensions that inform the gaze and how this gravitational force is experienced, produced, enforced, and reimagined by marginalized beings. It also reevaluates the gaze itself; we will examine the gaze within cinema, as a form of self-expression, institutional power, and a critical lens through which to question our looking practices. We will investigate how nationalism, race, gender, sexuality, ability, and class produce gazes while examining alternative gazes that envision an elsewhere. Context will guide our discussion as we consider how gazes are enforced within family, work, and political structures. Throughout the semester, students will research various interdisciplinary approaches to the gaze, consider their personal looking practices, and create a gaze of their own. This course takes an intersectional approach to the gaze; possible texts include La Llorona, Lilo & Stitch, and poetry by Alan Pelaez Lopez and Larry Mitchell.