
WGSS Graduate Students Host Conference on Social Justice in Pop Culture
What do Lady Gaga, Glee, the Bachelorette and Buffy the Vampire Slayer have in common? Aside from being ubiquitous in pop culture, they were all discussed last Friday at the University of Cincinnatis Pop Praxis: Social Justice and the Media, a conference hosted by the graduate student organization of the
Department of Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
(WGSS) in the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences.
The conference took a close look at pop culture in its representation of race, class, gender, sexuality disability and religion.
We started talking about this conference after all of us noticed common themes in our classes where we found that pop culture was a very important site of analysis for us, says conference organizer and WGSS graduate student Christina Black. This conference was an opportunity for us to make the conversation both academic but also popular in a way that might involve undergraduate students or members of the community.
The conference included 35 speakers, including faculty and students (both graduate and undergraduate) from UC and other area institutions like University of Kentucky and Ohio State University.
The keynote speaker was Andi Ziesler, co-founder and editorial/creative director of Bitch, a feminist magazine. Her lecture, Feminism, Technologies and Pop Culture Activism, highlighted the intersections of popular culture, feminism and activism.
Graduate students and co-organizers Krystal Cleary, Christina Black and Angela Zippin with Bitch cofounder Andi Ziesler.
Other titles from the all-day conference included:
Black Stereotypes and Resisting White Hegemony in Good Times
Postfeminist Math Barbie: Danica McKellar's Provocative Education Advocacy
30 Rock and Feminism in Flux
True love and happiness: Sexuality and romance on The Bachelorette
Queer Sex in a Straight City: Gender, Bisexuality, and Heteronormativity in Sex and the City
Outsider Within: Homosexuality and the Black Church
Freak of Culture: A Feminist Analysis of Lady Gagas Postmodern Disability Drag
All Is Not Glee-ful: How Glees Representation of Marginalized Groups Has Informed the Public Imagination and Perpetuated Harmful Stereotypes
Consuming Buffy: Embracing the Darkness and Female Empowerment in the Buffyverse
Batman and the Cultural Construction of Masculinity Ideals
The conference was sponsored by the
Charles Phelps Taft Research Center
, Graduate Student Governance Association, Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region, Friends of Womens Studies, the Department of Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and the Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Graduate Student Organization (WSGSO).
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