"While Black: Social Media, Social Justice" Social Justice Events Series Keynote

Millennials are defined by their savvy integration of digital technology and by their seamless incorporation of cultural difference. A changing cultural landscape, however, has not drastically shifted power relations nor has it dramatically transformed how we make sense of race today. Dr. Aisha Durham will describe the "work" of postrace rhetoric and discuss the ways young people use social media as a tool to reinforce or resist racial terror.

Aisha Durham is an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of South Florida. Her research about Black popular culture explores the relationship between media representations and everyday life. She examines how controlling images or power-laden stereotypes are produced by media makers and interpreted by media audiences to make sense of blackness in the "post" era. Durham uses auto/ethnography, performance writing, and intersectional approaches honed in Black feminist cultural criticism to analyze representations of Black womanhood in hip hop media. This scholarship contributes to an interdisciplinary field called hip hop feminism. Recent work on Black womanhood will be featured in her new awarding-winning book, Home with Hip Hop Feminism: Performances in Communication and Culture. This book extends earlier discussions about hip hop culture, media representations, and the body in her co-edited volumes, Home Girls Make Some!: Hip Hop Feminism Anthologyand Globalizing Cultural Studies: Ethnographic Interventions in Theory, Method & Policy.