The event investigates the formation of the American film industry from its origins into the 1940s and beyond, paying special attention to the racially specific underpinnings of stardom, animation, and exhibition. The mini-conference's invited speakers will discuss their groundbreaking research into the complex relationships between black audiences and black performers in the classical Hollywood era, early American animation’s reliance on blackface minstrelsy, and understanding African American film exhibition before 1930 as broadcasts of racial uplift and demands to control their own visual representation on screen. During the pedagogy session, the speakers will also interrogate how research into film history and cinema-related archival collections can help University faculty and graduate student instructors foster and facilitate critical discussions of race with their students.