NU film curriculum battles ‘white guy in film’ stereotypes

By BEATRICE VILLAFLOR the daily northwestern @beatricedvilla

Communication freshman Verónica Silvosa said she knew about the “white guy in film” stereotypes through memes — but at Northwestern, she sees the trope in full form.

“They’re real, and they’re out there,” Silvosa said. “Pretentious, think they know everything. Men who explain movies to you even though you might know more than them.”

Despite this, Silvosa said she was surprised by the amount of diversity within the Radio, Television and Film major — both in the curriculum and related extracurriculars.

She added that three of the four student-run sets she signed up for had female directors, with the fourth run by a Latine director.

“I really liked the amount of women and gender non-conforming people taking up the space,” she said.

Last quarter, Silvosa took RTVF 220:

Analyzing Media Texts, a core class for the RTVF major typically taken in the first year of studies. The course is a requirement for the film and media studies minor and a prerequisite for upper level courses in the RTVF department.

Silvosa’s professor assigned the Japanese animated film “Princess Mononoke” and the Chinese American film “The Farewell.”

“It’s so important to just have different lenses of life (in film) because if not, you’re going to be stuck watching the same movies over and over,” she said.

Communication Prof. Kalisha Cornett said efforts to emphasize diversity in RTVF classes included a new anti-racism curriculum for faculty created in the summer of 2020.

Cornett, who helped build the syllabus for the faculty curriculum, said its goal is to mobilize an anti-racist method of teaching not just momentarily, but as an ongoing system of inquiry.

“If you are going to have an anti-racist pedagogy… it’s not just about adding an extra Spike Lee film,” Cornett said. “It’s not about showing another Barry Jenkins film.”

Like Silvosa, Communication freshman Sofia Migaly said she did not expect to be exposed to many films that represented marginalized communities. Migaly also took the Analyzing Media Texts course last quarter.

She said that her experience with the RTVF curriculum so far has been more diverse than she thought it would be. Some professors tend to focus on what they deem “classic films,” she said, which tend to overrepresent white voices.

“I appreciate it when professors put diversity into their curriculum, especially in arts classes, because sometimes there’s a danger of falling into the trap of white men films,” Migaly said.

According to Cornett, teaching students about diversity in film is not about making students learn new concepts, but rather allowing them to unlearn their own preconceptions.

She said she hopes students of color studying RTVF will advocate for themselves, especially at a predominantly white institution. She also encourages students of color to be unafraid of asking for resources that might make their experience more equitable, like changes to curriculum.

“I’m hoping that more students will understand the value of that work and also the value of collective action,” Cornett added.

Although students may find progress within the faculty slow, Cornett said change is still ongoing, and that she believes incremental change is the best way forward.

She referenced a diversity, equity and inclusion symposium as an example of how the Communication faculty continues to strive towards improvement.

“Everyone now is in that unlearning moment of trying to figure out how they can break things down in order to build them back up — rather than putting a Band-Aid on things and just trying to throw (representation) on the end of the syllabus,” Cornett said. beatricevillaflor2026@u.northwestern.edu up to 70, you don’t want to drop down … No law school really wants to play this game.”

The U.S. News rankings place a heavy emphasis on employment after graduation, which Osofsky said disincentivizes support for interdisciplinary programs.

She said Pritzker will continue to support interdisciplinary knowledge by offering joint degree programs and other educational opportunities.

Osofsky added that U.S. News does not account for students who choose to engage in public interest fellowships and other similar programs, but that Pritzker is committed to supporting these students.

“The decision by U.S. News to devalue employment that is funded by public interest fellowships and to exclude loan forgiveness programs in its

Justice Team

From page 1

What will the investigation look like?

According to Biss, the goal of the environmental justice investigation is to map data on environmental inequities using a Geographic Information System mapping tool. The map will help outline where environmental disadvantages in Evanston are located in a way that’s easy for anyone to understand, he said.

While planning the investigation, city government worked closely with Environmental Justice Evanston, a branch of local environmental advocacy group Citizens’ Greener Evanston.

In the fall, the city’s Health and Human Services Department released its latest report on the Evanston Project for the Local Assessment of Needs, which aims to create a solid plan for combating health inequities in the city.

The 2022 EPLAN report combined data and resident input, showing that Evanston residents in the 5th Ward face far more adverse health effects than residents in most other parts of the city.

Jerri Garl, who co-chairs EJE along with Davis, said the upcoming investigation could help expose environmental causes behind many trends revealed by EPLAN.

Like with the EPLAN report, EJE also wants community engagement incorporated into the investigation. Incorporating residents’ lived experiences is also essential to getting the full picture of environmental injustices throughout the city and building trust in the community, Garl emphasized.

“The whole goal here was to uncover some of those decision-making processes… that lead to debt calculations does not support these efforts by our law school and other law schools to support our students,” Osofsky said.

It’s not yet clear whether undergraduate schools and other graduate programs will follow suit, according to Schieber, though Harvard Medical School already announced Wednesday its withdrawal from the U.S. News medical school rankings.

Schieber said alternative ranking systems could prompt this transition for more schools.

“Dissatisfaction with the methodology (of rankings) is not limited to law schools,” Kang said. “If it’s successful in changing in a constructive way how the U.S. News does its rankings, then I think it’s very likely to spread.” nicolemarkus2025@u.northwestern.edu these kinds of environmental injustices, whether they’re intentional or not,” Garl said.

According to EJE member Robyn Hurtig, the organization already started conducting listening sessions with small numbers of residents from the 2nd and 5th Wards.

Listening sessions will also help combat a broader lack of public engagement, which Davis said was a longstanding issue among her neighbors in the 5th Ward.

“A lot of times people don’t know that we have rights that we don’t really use, or we have a way that we can solve things within our own community, if we just understood what was going on,” she said.

What are concrete next steps?

After facing resident criticism for inactivity on its Climate Action and Resilience Plan, city government pledged to make sustainability a higher priority going forward. In its 2023 fiscal year budget, the city allocated $100,000 specifically to the investigation, Biss and Garl said.

EJE members said the city will use that money to hire facilitators for additional listening sessions. According to Davis, limited staff prevented the organization from diving further into listening sessions and data collection last year.

While EJE is “the entity that stayed the course” through years of environmental advocacy, Davis said, it has limited resources. The city has the resources to fully conduct the investigation, but Biss said COVID-19 has caused major delays in the investigation’s launch.

However, Garl said the time is now for the city to focus specifically on environmental justice.

“The mayor said in his press release, ‘We will continue with the listening sessions, we’re going to continue to work together on the mapping tool and we’ll continue to work together to help shape this investigation,’” Garl said. “But the burden is on the city to take action.” lilycarey2025@u.northwestern.edu