Aesthetics in Postcolonial Reading: Cinematic Challenges from Karmen Geï

Abstract

This article presents the complex pedagogical challenges and triumphs of an experience of teaching “postcolonial film.” It contains a template for teaching undergraduate students both film studies skills and critical skills to tackle postcolonial artistic creation in its widest respective theoretical and historical context. It also suggests ways for nonfilm studies specialists to integrate close study of a film within a course otherwise using text-based materials. An explication de texte is the most basic exercise that yields complex analyses of any sutured “text” and provides opportunities for sustained dialogue between the student and material. The highly sophisticated, creative, meticulous, and generative readings that students have produced in my experience of beginning every class curriculum with this most basic method of the French tradition has convinced me of its value for insightful reading and clear writing at all levels. I offer this example of explication, taken from my method of presenting and discussing a film, for instructors to modify for their purposes and, more specifically, to adapt film meaningfully into their courses.¹