Separate Cinema: Teaching Primary Source Literacy with Black Film Marketing

This poster presents a workshop model that uses Black cinema posters as primary sources to teach critical information literacy skills. By studying movie poster elements across different eras, from race films (1920s-50s) to Blaxploitation (1960s-70s) to modern Hollywood, students learn to evaluate marketer and audience perspectives, identify social biases, and interrogate gaps in historical narratives. This workshop shows how culturally responsive pedagogy can make primary source analysis more accessible and personally meaningful for students, particularly Black students.