Dienstag, 31. Mai 2022, 18:30 - 20:00 iCal
(En-)visioning Black Girlhood in the US
Afro-futurist Music Videos and Films
Saskia Fürst (Nassau)
Lecture
With the hugely successful release of Marvel’s Black Panther (February 16, 2018), the term Afrofuturism has been introduced into mainstream US news media and stories, drawing popular attention to a relatively new field of studies within Black Diaspora Studies. While Afrofuturist works have been produced in art, music, fashion and literature since at least the 1970s, my talk will focus on representations of Black woman/girlhood within recent emotion pictures (music videos) and Hollywood films. In Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer (2019) and Marvel’s Black Panther, the representations, conceptions and stereotypes surrounding Black woman/girlhood are being re-visualized, re-coded and inscribed into alternate pasts, presents and future worlds.
This is particularly important for Black girlhood as, historically, the stereotypical image of the aggressive, dirty and/or loud Black girl has been abundantly present in mainstream media while positive images of Black women and girls in positions of power, narrating and driving storylines, and as intelligent and resourceful are extremely scarce. Portraying Black women and girls as active participants in futuristic/alternative presents and technologically advanced societies via Afrofuturism provides positive counter-narratives and visual representations of Black woman/girlhood for contemporary viewers.
Saskia Fürst is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of The Bahamas. She completed her PhD on the representations of older Black women in US literature and print advertisements at the University of Salzburg. She holds a B.A. in German Studies, Political Science and Gender Studies from Rice University (Texas, USA) and a Diploma in English Studies from the University of Graz (Austria). Her article “Palimpsests of Ancestral Memories: Black Women’s Collective Identity Development in Short Stories by Edwidge Danticat and Dionne Brand” has been published with the English Academy Review (2017). She has edited two volumes, one on US American Expressions of Utopian and Dystopian Visions (Lit Verlag 2017) and a volume on Contemporary Quality TV: the Auteur, the Fans and Constructions of Gender (Lit Verlag 2021). Her latest publication is on representations of Black Girlhood in Afrofuturist Visual media in Women: Opportunities and Challenges (Nova 2020).
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Veranstalter
Referat Genderforschung der Universität Wien
Um Anmeldung wird gebeten
Kontakt
Sushila Mesquita
Referat Genderforschung
4277-18452
sushila.mesquita@univie.ac.at
Erstellt am Donnerstag, 31. Mrz 2022, 12:27
Letzte Änderung am Montag, 02. Mai 2022, 14:46