Category: Communications/Media Studies

  • How America Bought and Sold Racism, and Why It Still Matters Collectors Weekly 2015-11-10 Lisa Hix, Associated Editor Today, very few white Americans openly celebrate the horrors of black enslavement—most refuse to recognize the brutal nature of the institution or actively seek to distance themselves from it. “The modern American sees slavery as a regrettable period when…

  • How the cinematic act of passing embodied, exacerbated, and sometimes alleviated American fears

  • America’s obsession with multiracial beauty reveals our ongoing bias against blackness Quartz 2016-10-06 Robert L. Reece, Ph.D. Candidate Duke University Last month, rapper Kanye West posted a controversial casting call for his clothing line, Yeezy, mandating “multiracial women only.” Many objected, arguing that West had insulted darker-skinned black women. But Kanye was only adhering to…

  • ‘MIXED’ Values: Biraciality in Non-Post-Racial America Documentary Magazine International Documentary Association 2016-09-23 Caty Borum Chattoo, Co-Director Center for Media & Social Impact, Washington, D.C. Filmmakers Caty Borum Chattoo (front left) and Leena Jayaswal (front right) with the first mixed-race couple in North Carolina after the Loving v. Virginia decision. The comments—and the fetishizing perspectives—were naively…

  • This Movie Was Nearly Lost. Now They’re Fighting to Save It. The New York Times 2016-09-23 John Anderson Richard Romain in the 1982 film “Cane River.” Credit IndieCollect When it debuted in 1982, “Cane River” was already a rarity: a drama by an independent black filmmaker, financed by wealthy black patrons and dealing with race…

  • Not under my roof: Interracial relationships and black image in post-World War II film Northern Illinois University 2015 56 pages Publication Number: 10008811 ProQuest document ID: 1765648575 ISBN: 9781339455150 Andre Berchiolly This thesis examines the historical implications of miscegenation and interracial interactions between minority males and white females in Post-World War II independent cinema. Elia…

  • The Ambiguous and the Mundane: Racial Performance and Asian Americans Contemporary Literature Volume 57, Number 2, Summer 2016 pages 292-300 Josephine D. Lee, Professor of English and Asian American University of Minnesota Jennifer Ann Ho, Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture. New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Rutgers University Press, 2015. xi + 215 pp. $90.00…

  • It’s the summer of 1998 and I’m at the mall with my mom and my sister Anna, who has just turned 5. I’m 7. Anna and I are cranky from being too hot, then too cold, then too bored. We keep touching things we are not supposed to touch, and by the time Mom drags…

  • Our Diversity Isn’t Looking Very Diverse Affinity Magazine 2016-08-20 Etienne Rodriguez Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Look alive, True Believers, if the rumors are to be believed, then Zendaya is playing the role of Mary Jane Watson in the upcoming Spider-Man movie. This is the latest in a series of black women being…

  • Barack Obama and Immigrant Blackness: A Catalyst for Structural Change The International Journal of Diversity in Organizations, Communities and Nations: Annual Review Volume 12 (2012) pages 33-42 Kirin Wachter-Grene, Acting Instructor of Literature New York University This essay builds upon an argument I make in my article “Beyond the Binary: Obama’s Hybridity and Post-Racialization” to…