Expanding the Black Film Canon

Associate professor of African American studies Lisa Doris Alexander follows her first scholarly work on media images in baseball with Expanding the Black Film Canon. Framing her chapters like a theatrical movie, Alexander commits to producing a critical study of Black film to fill a crucial void because “Black films overall, regardless of their critical acclaim, political importance, or box-office success, do not receive the scholarly attention they deserve” (p. 3). The author admits that some choices in the readable volume, such as Blazing Saddles (1974), fall outside the debatable definition of Black film but nonetheless deserve “critical analysis” through the lens of critical race theory and Black feminist thought as popular representations of Black movies from the 1960s forward. Through such evaluations, within the framework of intersectionality considering race, class, gender, and sexual orientation, Alexander hopes to provide “more nuanced representations of black characters” and help combat the

Aesthetics · Art · Canon · Critical race theory · Framing (construction · Intersectionality · Political science · Politics · Race (biology · Sociology · American Sports and Literature · Gender Studies · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society · Sports, Gender, and Society