Film & Television Studies: Black Coming-of-Age in the 1990s

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TIR Screens Presents

Welcome Back Class.  Last year, we explored Black romance films of the 1990s and early 2000s.  We took a close look at love, art, and identity through a 2025 lens and some of our initial perspectives of the films were changed, and some remained the same.  That series centered adulthood, intimacy, and self-definition. This new study shifts the lens backward, toward the years that shaped those stories.

If Black romance films ask who we are when we love, Black coming-of-age films is the prequel, asking who we are becoming.

Let’s stay with the same time period, the 1990s.  We can explore how these films highlight the interior lives of children, teenagers and young adults through memory, family dynamics, ambition, grief, joy, and the quiet pressures of growing up. The coming-of-age genre looks not just at a single moment, but a development trajectory within a culture and environment.

Featured Films

This is a film-centered series; however, television in the 90s offered many examples of Black youth and family dynamics, such as: Roc, South Central, A Different World, The Cosby Show, The Women of Brewster Place, Living Single, The Parent ’Hood, and Moesha.  We will include the shows listed below for comparison and context as they apply to the focus film of the week. 

Our Featured Films: Coming-of-Age Narratives

1. Eve’s Bayou (1997)
2. Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (1992)
3. Crooklyn (1994)
4. Above the Rim (1994)
5. Higher Learning (1995)
6. Fresh (1994)
7. The Inkwell (1994)  
8. House Party (1990)

Each week will focus on one film, examining how coming-of-age is shaped by family, community, gender, class, and cultural expectation.  These series help illustrate how coming-of-age themes were normalized, reframed, or softened for weekly audiences.

Schedule

Last year’s series included multiple posts in Google Classroom, Zoom-type calls, social media and Blog posts.  This series will not be as extensive.  First it will only be 8 films instead of 12.  We will not be using Google Classroom either.  A blog post will be posted weekly beginning Friday, January 30 and follow for the following seven weeks, see schedule below.   I will post on TikTok periodically following the blog post into the next week.

• 1/30/26
• 2/6/26
• 2/13/26
• 2/20/26
• 2/27/26
• 3/6/26
• 3/13/26

I look forward to chatting with you all and getting your take on each film. 

Stay Connected with TIR Screens

Please use the comment section on blog posts as well as social media posts to let us know your thoughts on the series. To stay connected between posts, follow along on the TIR social channels below, where episode reactions, watchlists, and ongoing discussion continue throughout the week.

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