A Lecture by Professor Amber Jamilla Musser

Unlike Get Out, whose plot twists provided some of the film’s shock, the trailers for Us foreground the film’s conceit: a family comes home from a day at the beach to find murderous doubles in their home. While the film complicates this reveal, the sense of dread that the film activates comes not from suspense but from its mobilization of the uncanny. Even before the doppelgangers are introduced, the film—especially upon repeat viewing—percolates with the sense that something is amiss. Bringing the unruly sensations of the uncanny to bear on Jordan Peele’s Us allows us to see how horror makes especially evident the United States as Imperial formation and the numerous ways that Black femininity is presented as threat.

Amber Jamilla Musser is a professor of English and Africana Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research lies at the intersection of race, sexuality, and culture. Her books include: Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism (2014), Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance (2018) and most recently Between Shadows and Noise: Sensation, Situatedness, and the Undisciplined (2024).

This event is free and open to the public.

Sponsored by the American Studies Program, the Africana Studies Program, the Sociology Department, and the Film Department.