ABSTRACT

This collection fills a gap in the current literature in philosophy and film by focusing on the question: How would thinking in philosophy and film be transformed if race were formally incorporated moved from its margins to the center?

The collection’s contributors anchor their discussions of race through considerations of specific films and television series, which serve as illustrative examples from which the essays’ theorizations are drawn. Inclusive and current in its selection of films and genres, the collection incorporates dramas, comedies, horror, and science fiction films (among other genres) into its discussions, as well as recent and popular titles of interest, such as Twilight, Avatar, Machete, True Blood, and The Matrix and The Help. The essays compel readers to think more deeply about the films they have seen and their experiences of these narratives.

part |14 pages

Introduction

part I|54 pages

Epistemology

chapter 2|16 pages

“Born into Bondage”

Teaching The Matrix and Unlearning the Racial Organization of Knowledge

part II|32 pages

Aesthetics

chapter 4|13 pages

“So Now You're Swedish-American?”

Jewish-American Women and Philosophies of Beauty in Requiem for a Dream

chapter 5|17 pages

Cruising through Race

part III|48 pages

Moral Philosophy

chapter 8|15 pages

“Now, Imagine She's White”

The Gift of the Black Gaze and the Reinscription of Whiteness as Normative in A Time to Kill

part IV|46 pages

Social and Political Philosophy

chapter 9|15 pages

Race as/and (Ex)change

Trading Places and the Rise of Neoliberalism

chapter 10|15 pages

Hardly Black and White

Racial and Sexual Stereotypes in Manderlay and Black Snake Moan

chapter 11|14 pages

Elisions of Race and Stories of Progress

Planet 51 and The Princess and the Frog

part V|31 pages

Technology and the (Lived) Body

chapter 12|14 pages

Vampires, Technology, and Racism

The Vampiric Image in Twilight and Let Me In

chapter 13|15 pages

Desperate Black Female

Sex and Race in Monster's Ball