Alessandra Raengo teaches in the Moving Image Studies doctoral program at Georgia State University, USA. Her research focuses on blackness in the visual and aesthetic fields. She is the author of On the Sleeve of the Visual: Race as Face Value, and coordinator of liquid blackness, a research project on blackness and aesthetics.

Critical Race Theory and Bamboozled offers readers a rigorously researched analysis of Spike Lee’s challenging film rendered through the multi-focal lens of Critical Race Theory. Raengo argues for the usefulness of engaging Film Studies through an understanding of blackness as a complex constellation of discursive modalities that extend across scholarly fields and that cannot be reduced to simplistic frameworks of essentialism. She then realizes her arguments in an eloquently written analysis of Bamboozled that considers it as a visual, an aesthetic, and a fundamentally political text that demands viewer engagement on multiple levels. It is an exciting addition to scholarship seeking to ask new questions about race and American film.

• Introduction - Section 1: Critical Race Theory, Critical Race Discourse, and Film Theory- Section 2: Bamboozled: Blackness as Form, Aesthetics, Visual Theory- Section 3: Blackness and Film Theory: Provocations and Contributions - ConclusionAppendicesHow to Perform a Critical Race Analysis

Alessandra Raengo teaches in the Moving Image Studies doctoral program at Georgia State University, USA. Her research focuses on blackness in the visual and aesthetic fields. She is the author of On the Sleeve of the Visual: Race as Face Value, and coordinator of liquid blackness, a research project on blackness and aesthetics.

Critical Race Theory and Bamboozled offers readers a rigorously researched analysis of Spike Lee’s challenging film rendered through the multi-focal lens of Critical Race Theory. Raengo argues for the usefulness of engaging Film Studies through an understanding of blackness as a complex constellation of discursive modalities that extend across scholarly fields and that cannot be reduced to simplistic frameworks of essentialism. She then realizes her arguments in an eloquently written analysis of Bamboozled that considers it as a visual, an aesthetic, and a fundamentally political text that demands viewer engagement on multiple levels. It is an exciting addition to scholarship seeking to ask new questions about race and American film.

• Introduction - Section 1: Critical Race Theory, Critical Race Discourse, and Film Theory- Section 2: Bamboozled: Blackness as Form, Aesthetics, Visual Theory- Section 3: Blackness and Film Theory: Provocations and Contributions - ConclusionAppendicesHow to Perform a Critical Race Analysis