Bowling Green State University will hold a Digital/Media, Race, Affect and Labor Conference on Thursday
and Friday.
The conference, sponsored by the American Culture Studies program, is designed to bring together layered
and intersecting themes associated with media, digital worlds, labor, affect, globalization and race.
Rising young scholars will examine the interrelationship among race, gender, immaterial labor, and new
media technologies by looking at emerging media spaces – Twitter, Sims 2, iPhone 4. They also examine
historical mappings of race, caste, class and gender as well as historical contextualization of how
media forms reveal complex and nuanced understandings of digital economies which are shaped in relation
to globalization.
Dr. Anna Everett will be the keynote speaker Thursday at 7 p.m. in room 201 of the Bowen-Thompson Student
Union.
She is the author of “Returning the Gaze: A Genealogy of Black Film Criticism, 1909-1949” and “Digital
Diaspora: A Race for Cyberspace.”
Everett is a professor of film, television and new media studies at the University of California at Santa
Barbara.
A special panel discussion will be held Friday from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in room 101 of Olscamp Hall.
Members of the panel will be Dr. Jillana Enteen, associate director and director of undergraduate studies
program at Northwestern University; Dr. Teri Senft, program leader and senior lecturer in media studies
at the University of East London, U.K.; and Dr. Vicki Mayer, associate professor, communication/editor
of television & new media at Tulane University.
Other sessions on Thursday will discuss constructions of race and gender in the networks, from 9:30 to
10:50 a.m., and questions of labor and nationality at the interface, from 2:15 to 3:35 p.m. Both
sessions will be in room 208 of the student union. Among the speakers in the afternoon session will be
Cassandra Jones of BGSU. There will also be a session from 11 a.m. to 12:20 p.m. on Thursday in room 315
of the student union featuring three speakers fron BGSU: Lance Massey, Alex Champlin and Melinda Lewis.
The Friday morning session will discuss affective bodies from 9:30 to 10:30 in the East Hall ACS
conference room. Among the speakers will be Michael DelNero of BGSU.
The conference is free and open to the public.
For more information about the conference contact (419) 372-0586, [email protected] or visit:
https://blogs.bgsu.edu/raceandaffect/
The American Culture Studies program, established in 1978, is currently under the direction of Dr.
Radhika Gajjala.
