Womanist Worldmaking: Black Women’s Pleasure as a Framework for Expansive Cinematic Gazes

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: The messaging within cinema holds immense social power. The ability to immerse oneself within a world created by a director’s gaze provides opportunities for connection and understanding internally and externally. Historically, these gazes have instilled imagery based in notions of racism and sexism that have positioned Black women outside of pleasurable experiences across the realms of audiences, performers, and creators themselves. The intersectional experiences of multiple identities are rarely depicted in mainstream media, and for that reason Black women’s interactions with cinema are often limited and laborious. Working to subvert these oppressive gazes, activists and creatives orient around pleasure- based frameworks of personal and creative liberation. In this thesis, we work to connect these frameworks and their extensions to Womanist praxis to that of cinematic gaze development, in order to further develop modes of looking that center authentic experiences for Black women.

Author	Hippolyte, Sequoiah

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Preferred citation: Hippolyte, S. (2022). Womanist Worldmaking: Black Women’s Pleasure as a Framework for Expansive Cinematic Gazes. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/pw429tx1635

Undergraduate Honors Theses in African and African American Studies, Stanford University

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