Watching History Through Our Fingers: Handling Past and Present Traumas in Teaching The Birth of a Nation

Still from tinted copy of The Birth of a Nation

I teach one of the most racist films in the 125 year-long history of cinema, D.W. Griffith’s 1915 revisionist Civil War epic The Birth of a Nation, and it’s a terrifying experience each time.

For four years now, I have been teaching a one-semester Film Art and History lecture class in…