Episodes

  • Indigenous Women's Animation as Multimedia Art
    Dec 3 2021
    In this week's episode, guest Channette Romero discusses her article "Toward an Indigenous Feminine Animation Aesthetic," which analyzes the aesthetics and politics of animation shorts created by Indigenous women situated in North America. Romero argues that these women's innovative animation styles draw attention to the pervasive colonial gaze in mainstream animation and position Indigenous creatives as foremost multimedia artists.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    51 mins
  • Telenovelas and Black Celebrity in Brazil
    Nov 12 2021
    In this week's episode, guest Bruno Guaraná discusses his article "Taís Araújo: The Black Helena against Brazil's Whitening Television," which traces key moments in the television career of one of Brazi's most popular television celebrities Taís Araújo, including the several times she has been slated as "the first black protagonist" on different television shows. Guaraná argues that, against Brazilian television's practices of whitening raced subjects and pushing forth a colorblind ideology, the construction of Araújo's star image has ultimately turned her into a popular symbol of black female resistance.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    51 mins
  • Digital Altars and Migrant Death in Mexico
    Nov 5 2021
    In this week's episode, guest Xiomara Cervantes-Gómez discusses her article "Where Blackness Dies: The Aesthetics of a Massacre and the Violence of Remembering," which analyzes the digital altar created to commemorate the lives of 72 Central American migrants massacred in Mexico in 2010. Cervantes-Gómez builds on this analysis to interrogate the sensationalist depictions of migrant death, the affordances and limitations of digital media for attending to the divine, and, ultimately, the politics of blackness in the context of Mexico and the American continent.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    48 mins
  • The Politics of Blackness in Britain
    Oct 28 2021
    In this week's episode, guest Mohan Ambikaipaker discusses his article "Music Videos and the 'War on Terror' in Britain: Benjamin Zephaniah's Infrapolitical Blackness in Rong Radio," which analyzes the political project of the music video Rong Radio, created by British artist Benjamin Zephaniah based on his own dub poem. Ambikaipaker argues that Rong Radio illustrates an "infra-political blackness," a form of coalition building that is less tied to specific identity markers and instead builds solidarity across people of color responding to shared legacies of disenfranchisement through colonialism and imperialism. Ambikaipaker also discusses the affordances of music videos for activists looking to raise awareness of transnational issues and for educators hoping to generate discussion on complex topics in the classroom.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    48 mins
  • Pirate Film Cultures in Manila
    Oct 22 2021
    In this week's episode, guest Jasmine Nadua Trice discusses her article "Manila's New Cinephilia," which analyzes the informal circulation of DVDs through Manila's street vendors during the early 21st century. Trice demonstrates how these pirate forms of film distribution and consumption are quotidian practices in the Global South and why they represent new form of cinephilia, an appreciation of and deep knowledge of cinema's technological aspects independent of the text itself.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    45 mins
  • Documentary Ethics and Trans Activism in the Philippines
    Oct 7 2021
    In this week's episode, guest Curran Nault discusses his article "Documenting the Dead: Call Her Ganda and the Trans Activist Afterlife of Jennifer Laude," which analyzes the production and circulation of the documentary that Nault co-produced about the murder of transpinay Jennifer Laude by a US marine. Informed by his roles as both producer and media scholar, Nault raises critical questions about the aesthetics and ethics of re-presenting trans death and, ultimately, reflects on the possibilities and limitations of documentary as a trans activist tool.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    53 mins
  • Brown Girls, White Feminism, and the Necropolitics of War
    Sep 30 2021
    n this week's episode, guest Moon Charania discusses her article "Ethical Whiteness and the Death Drive: White Women as the New War Hero," which examines how contemporary films use white women protagonists to justify drone warfare and military intervention in the Middle East. Charania argues that media mobilize the figure of the suffering brown girl to elicit empathy and to assuage Western audiences' guilt about collateral damage in neo-colonial wars. Through what Charania calls "ethical whiteness", Global North citizens can promote humanitarian causes to rescue Global South brown girls from numerous atrocities without interrogating how their own governments are responsible for creating the conditions for such atrocities.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    57 mins
  • The End of the American Media Empires
    Sep 21 2021
    In this week's episode, guest Michael Curtin discusses his article "Post Americana: Twenty-First Century Media Globalization" a wide-reaching examination of the political and social forces that shaped the United States' dominance in global media during the 20th century. Curtin argues that, after nearly a century of American hegemony, media industries are today growing more plastic and complicated, scaling their ambitions and operations in an increasingly dynamic environment filled with new technologies, shifting audiences, and emerging economies.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    57 mins