The SJMC Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee invites African American Studies students to their first emerging scholar talk with Dr. Chelsea Peterson-Salahuddin, who will be visiting campus on Monday, February 3. She will be giving a talk in the Nafziger room in Vilas Communication Hall from 12 -2 (lunch will be provided). RSVP here by Thursday, January 30 so we have an accurate headcount for food. You are still welcome to attend if you do not RSVP.
Talk Title: Fugitive media: Black feminism, popular media, and the political possibilities of tension
Abstract: From words and phrases like “intersectionality,” “identity politics, ” and #Sayhername to representations of Ball culture in Beyoncé’s Renaissance, Black feminist ideas, aesthetics, and concepts have increasingly traveled into the public sphere through various forms of popular media—media that circulates through popular culture, such as news, television, and movies—to create “Popular Black Feminism.” Popular Black Feminism can expose mass audiences to the lived realities of Black women, femme, and queer folks in productive ways for thinking about liberation. At the same time, the neoliberal capitalist goals of the media institutions and technologies that produce popular media lie in direct contrast to the structural analysis of marginalization that Black feminism intends to offer, sometimes leading to problematic moments of misunderstandings and misuse. Through the examples of two forms of Popular Black feminism, Black feminist journalism and Black feminist television shows, this talk will illustrate how media producers’ attempt to navigate the tension between dominant media industry economic paradigms and political values produce different manifestations of what I term fugitive media: media with embedded meanings that refuse and attempt to escape the representational norms and grounds set out for them by neoliberal media markets. I argue the concept of fugitive media offers communications studies scholars a lens through which to understand the nuanced relationship that shapes how ideas and information stemming from liberatory politics enter into spheres of popular culture and how this entreé necessarily shapes how we do and must engage with these concepts.