Introduction to Race Films
By Samantha N. Sheppard
“Race films starred Black actors and actresses and were made explicitly for Black audiences during a growth of segregated theater development in the North and the South. In this measure, race films were … made with and for Black people as mainstream Hollywood films demeaned or excluded Black people in front of and behind the camera.”
—Samantha N. Sheppard
Samantha N. Sheppard
Program Lecturer
“Introduction to Race Films”
Samantha N. Sheppard is Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She writes extensively on issues of race, gender, and representation in film, television, and digital media for academic journals and popular venues, including Film Quarterly and The Atlantic. She is the author of Sporting Blackness: Race, Embodiment, and Critical Muscle Memory on Screen (University of California Press, 2020) and the co-editor of Sporting Realities: Critical Readings of the Sports Documentary (University of Nebraska Press, 2020) and From Madea to Media Mogul: Theorizing Tyler Perry (University Press of Mississippi, 2016).