Black and Brown Feminisms in Hip Hop Media

Black and Brown Feminisms in Hip Hop Media University of Texas at San Antonio - March 4-5, 2011 Submission deadline: November 15, 2010 Updated Call for Papers

UTSA presents Black and Brown Feminisms in Hip Hop Media with keynote address by Gwendolyn Pough, Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Syracuse University and featured speaker G. Henderson, Professor of English at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Black and Latina feminist scholars offer multiple ways of understanding feminist cultures that transcend ideological borders and patriarchal conventions. More recently, Black and Latina feminists have negotiated the positionality of the woman of color in the ever-changing world of Hip Hop since its inception. The Black and Brown Feminisms in Hip Hop Media Conference situates Black and Latina feminist theory in the context of Hip Hop representation to discuss ways Hip Hop music, film, and club industries fetishize, exploit, celebrate, empower and/or disempower Black and Brown women.

The conference will feature keynote speaker and internationally acclaimed Hip Hop scholar Gwendolyn Pough, Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Syracuse University. Her work examines the public sphere of Hip Hop culture and Black women’s interaction and participation in it to determine representations of Black women in such male dominated spheres and more generally in a current society. Some of her publications include Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture and the Public Sphere (Northeastern University Press, 2004), "Personal Narrative and Rhetorics of Black Womanhood in Hip-Hop" in Rhetoric and Ethnicity (Heinemann-Boynton/Cook, 2004), and "Do the Ladies Run This . . .? Some Thoughts on Hip Hop Feminism" in Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century (Northeastern UP, 2003).

In addition, the conference presents feature speaker Mae G. Henderson, Professor of English at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her writing reflects her interest in a concern with gender, race, and performativity. Dr. Henderson is co-editor of the groundbreaking text Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology (Duke UP, 2005). Her publications also include “The Stories of (O)Dessa: Stories of Complicity and Resistance” in Female subjects in Black and White: Race, Psychoanalysis, Feminism (University of California Press, 1997) and Borders, Boundaries, and Frames: Essays in Cultural Criticism and Cultural Studies (Routledge, 1995).

This interdisciplinary conference will feature unpublished work on women in Hip Hop to exchange ideas, share research, and initiate a sustained conversation by and about Black and Brown women in Hip Hop media. Vital to this discussion is attention to the blurring lines between Black and Latina feminist studies and a dialogue that attempts to understand an interweaving history of objectification, struggle, and potential for agency. How do we read Black and Brown women in Hip Hop culture? What readings of Black and Brown women other than conventional black feminist readings and Latina feminist analyses are cogent? What theories enable those readings? Finally, what would an investigation into autobiographical stories of video models yield? How would those narratives differ from that of more conventional readings?

A select number of accepted papers will be included in a one-day, academic conference at the University of Texas at San Antonio as a part of UTSA’s celebration of Women’s History Month on March 4, 2011 with a Hip Hop performance from local Texas as well as national hip hop artists on the evening of March 5, 2011. This conference will be an opportunity for presenters to share views and concerns on the growing intersections between Black and Brown women in hip hop culture. Possible Panel Topics Include:

Interdisciplinary Approaches to Gender and Race in Hip Hop Colorism within Hip-Hop video culture The New Female Entrepreneur Negotiating Sexualities Black and Latina Diasporas Video Vixens or Video Models? Female Rappers Queer Identities Chicana/o Rap Alternative Models of Black Femininity Latinas in Video Model Culture Intersections of Video Models with Youth Culture Performing the Black Body/ Brown Body Reggaeton Able-Bodied Privilege in Hip Hop Feminisms A Case Study of Karrine Steffans Strip Club Culture Confessions of Video Vixens Eroticism vs. Pornography Women as Exchange among a Male Economy

Please submit a 500 word abstract to Kinitra Brooks and/or Marco Cervantes [email protected] on or before November 15, 2010. Required registration for the conference will be $40.