In 2008 AA&AS and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication are the primary sponsors of a speaker series: "Global Media <-> Diasporic Cultures." Corporations within the transnational media industry compete to capitalize upon traditions and popular cultural forms from around the globe. Simultaneously, artists and audiences from these cultural spaces continue to innovate and migrate in the shifting economic and social landscapes of the 21st century. Courting these multicultural, often nomadic, audiences, media makers seek to acquire, shape, and re-shape cultural materials in order to transmit products that draw upon and market to different racial, cultural, and national identities. The speakers in this series have produced cutting-edge research on this quickly changing landscape of media texts and cultures. Their work sheds light on genres, styles, and stars of this multinational media era, as well as the cultural, social, political, and economic phenomena that drive trends in this media landscape. Members of the university community, as well as communities within the Twin Cities, who attend these talks will be able to engage with the speakers about specific cases of media products and persona that reflect upon global media cultures, and discuss the often problematic deployment of race, ethnicity, gender, and national identities represented in many media trends.
The following speakers have been scheduled: Bambi Haggins (University of Michigan), author of Laughing Mad: The Black Comic Persona in Post-Soul America; University of Minnesota faculty member Jigna Desai, author of Beyond Bollywood: The Cultural Politics of South Asian Diasporic Film; Deborah Paredez (University of Texas, Austin), author of the forthcoming book Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory; Sean Jacobs (University of Michigan), South African journalist and scholar; and University of Minnesota faculty member Richard Martinez, who is working on analysis of news coverage of the 2006 immigration protests. Martinez will kick off the series on Friday, February 1, 2008 (12-1:10 in Murphy Hall 228).
