While scouring the course offerings during the Advanced Registration period last fall semester, I was intrigued by a class I came across in my major’s department that described exactly the type of work and academic theory that I’ve been wanting to explore since coming to Penn.
COMM 390-301: Black: Joy, Aesthetics and Critical Media Making is a special topics Communication course in Annenberg, taught by post-doctoral fellow Dr. Chaz A. Barracks. According to the course description, “This course will allow students to study concepts from Black studies, film studies, communication, and performance to learn practical approaches to understanding joy as a form of resistance.”
As a result of being in this course, I’ve become more adept in analyzing various media texts to understand the varying portrayals of Black aesthetics on screen. And as a result of taking this course with our DSGN 264 course simultaneously, I’ve been working to produce my own final COMM 390 media project drawing on the skills that I’ve picked up from both of these classes. In my digital collage series currently in progress, I produce visual representations that explore many of the core themes present in our course readings and class-wide discussions from COMM 390 and DSGN 264 alike. Through a combination of imagery collected from internet search engines, assigned media texts, and personal photographs, I’ve been able to create a series of collages that examine some of the most important topics from this semester such as: the notion of professionalism, sexual desire and exploration, and the intrinsic value of the home-place as a site of resistance. Although this project is still a work in progress, I’m humbled and honored to have the opportunity to share it on this blog to exemplify the possibilities of utilizing the knowledge we attain from our coursework for our own joy and creative passions.
