Black History Month Symposium: Discussions on Race and Media

Black History Month Symposium: Discussions on Race and Media

Sponsored by a USC Libraries Dean's Challenge Grant

RSVP not necessary; but if you RSVP, you will receive a reminder about the event.

Schedule:

2:00-3:00: Introductory Session: Using Media in the Antiracist Classroom

Panelists:

• Alyssa Brissett – Social Work Librarian, USC Libraries
• Elizabeth Galoozis – Head of Information Literacy, USC Libraries
• Kevin Klipfel – Instructional Design and Assessment Librarian, USC Libraries
• Lacey Schauwecker – Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Fellow in Spanish and Portuguese

USC Members of the Antiracist Pedagogy Collective will discuss how to use different types of media resources in the classroom while drawing on antiracist pedagogy principles and methods. We will also address problematic tropes of teaching in the media, and how teachers can acknowledge and discuss their own race in the classroom without contributing to those tropes.

3:00-3:15: Brief Introduction to the Floyd C. Covington Papers

• William Deverell, Professor of History, USC; and Director, USC Libraries Collections Convergence Initiative

Selections from the collection are on view in Doheny Memorial Library.

3:15-3:30: Break/Refreshments

3:30-5:00: Keynote Session

A moderated panel discussion and Q&A session will explore the issues surrounding race and media from a multitude of perspectives. TYREE BOYD PATES addresses the curation and preservation of Black history within museums to convey the nuance of the Black experience. ROBESON TAJ FRAZIER explores the role that traditions, rituals, and practices of Black diasporic media, art, and aesthetics have played as tools of healing and expression, and as living resources for the cultivation of community self-determination, imagination, and involvement in the act of living. SHELLEEN GREENE examines performative acts in African diasporic cultural production that challenge, subvert, and expand our understanding of racial and gendered embodiment and disembodiment, offering moral exploration and alternate histories of the technological, scientific, and political conditions of our current moment of globalization that are attentive to the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade, new world slavery, and settler colonialism. And JARED SEXTON discusses the difficulty of establishing conceptual links within media narratives between racial justice and the overlapping environmental crises publicly associated with climate change.

Panelists:

• Tyree Boyd Pates – History Curator and Program Manager, California African American Museum
• Robeson Taj Frazier – Associate Professor of Communications; Director of the Institute for Diversity and Empowerment, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
• Shelleen Greene – Associate Professor, UCLA Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media
• Jared Sexton –Professor of African American Studies and Film & Media Studies, UC Irvine

For questions about the event, please contact kapsidel@usc.edu.