Finding Our Roots: Documentaries of Ancestry and Identity

COURSE DESCRIPTION
​Today, genealogy is big business. In 2015, Ancestry.com earned a revenue of $683 million, MyHeritage.com claimed 80 million registered members, and FindMyPast.com boasted records dating back to AD 1200. Boosting these numbers are popular televised documentary series like Who Do You Think You Are? (NBC/BBC), Finding Your Roots (PBS), and Genealogy Roadshow (PBS)—all of which Ancestry.com very visibly sponsors. (There’s even a drinking game!)

​Along with these three shows, this class will consider documentary films and web series spawned by this latest interest in genealogy. As we relate the works to larger historical issues and examine some of the political, racial, economic, and nationalist sensibilities that surround tracing one’s roots, we will ask questions like the following:

• Why is genealogy such a booming business, and how do these media texts endorse it?
• Which mode(s) and conventions of documentary best suit(s) this topic?
• Why are certain people and personalities chosen for these series/films and others omitted? 
• What ethics are involved when subjects (like Ben Affleck, most recently) ask producers to omit sordid portions of their past?
  
  

​Classes will consist of lectures, screenings, and discussion. A taste of those whose ancestries will be profiled: rapper 50 Cent, journalist Anderson Cooper, activist Gloria Steinem, filmmaker Walter Dominguez, and the children of Hitler. Finally, using digital technologies, public records, and other primary archives, students will document onscreen their own family trees.

​Kelli Marshall, Winter 2017

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