About

May 10-11, 2022 on Zoom

Zoom link (registration required): uoregon.zoom.us/j/91990168455

“Rethinking Popular Performance: a Symposium on Race, Media, and Visual Culture” is a two-day interdisciplinary event that will specifically 1) reflect on the ways in which scholars are engaging Black feminist and queer of color critique to interpret popular TV, film, media, and performance, and 2) imagine how principles of Black feminist and queer of color critique can continue to support equity and inclusion at the University of Oregon. The symposium will first of all explore some of the most innovative Black feminist and queer of color approaches to reading popular visual archives. Such approaches see the increased representation of historically marginalized groups in popular culture as only part of a much broader equation for social change. Pushing conversations about diversity in media beyond questions of mere representation, they ask: how do long-standing formations of race, gender, and sexuality determine the very terms of critical analysis? Operating on the premise that Black feminist and queer of color principles have implications for how all cultural critics understand visual media, this symposium will also foster dialogue across identity categories and academic disciplines. It will ask how dominant ideas about Blackness in particular inflect critical discussions about gender, sexuality, and ethnicity in popular visual culture and performance.  In doing so, this symposium will invite faculty, students, and community members into complex dialogue about identity formations and knowledge production in today’s media environment.