What makes a family? This seminar explores how American writers, filmmakers, and artists have described and deconstructed families from the nineteenth century to the present. How can stories about family help us read everyday life? To see structures of power and control? To imagine new possibilities for care? From classic sitcoms to Project 2025, we will also consider the social and political stakes of how family is defined, and by whom. Possible texts and topics include: reality TV, Stanford family archives, immigration, Bambi, Lost Children Archive, family therapy, and One Battle After Another. For their final project, students will make creative-critical albums describing a (real or fictional) family of their choice.
5 units · Letter (ABCD/NP)
What makes a family? This seminar explores how American writers, filmmakers, and artists have described and deconstructed families from the nineteenth century to the present. How can stories about family help us read everyday life? To see structures of power and control? To imagine new possibilities for care? From classic sitcoms to Project 2025, we will also consider the social and political stakes of how family is defined, and by whom. Possible texts and topics include: reality TV, Stanford family archives, immigration, Bambi, Lost Children Archive, family therapy, and One Battle After Another. For their final project, students will make creative-critical albums describing a (real or fictional) family of their choice.
Offered in Spring 2027 at Stanford University.