| Dark artifacts is a social and cultural history of the United States using visual culture, especially film noir, as a means of exploring a set of themes that were central to the period. It will include lectures, readings, discussion, and public service films focused on such themes as race, class, gender, infidelity, organized crime, and nuclear bomb anxiety. Each week a film noir from the period will be watched and discussed. This is not a film course per se; nor is it designed to showcase the best films of the so-called ‘noir cycle.’ The films have been chosen for their articulation of alternative viewpoints and/or the anxieties of the post-war decades. Most of the films that will be shown provide a counter-narrative to the prevailing view of America projected by mainstream Hollywood, the establishment press, and the government. |
