The Feminist and Gender Studies Program presents “Relating Across Borders, A Teach-In about Representation” with Mekael Daniel, Judy Fisher, and Samuel Vang on Thursday November 7, 2019 from 4-5:30 at Sacred Grounds.

 

Representations of Afro-Asian Solidarities 

Within white supremacist ideology, groups of color are pitted against one another to discourage cross-community relationship building. One of the ways this presents is through the model minority myth which exceptionalizes Asian success while it is also weaponized against Black people. For this teach-in, Mekael will highlight and analyze a small portion of visual and textual representations of Afro-Asian solidarities (through mediums such as photography, painting, and fiction), and how these representations subvert white supremacist racial hierarchies that seek to pit Black people and Asian people against each other economically, politically, socially and academically.

Indigeneity in Germany

This teach-in will focus on how images and representations of indigeneity in Germany are tied to global and transnational flows that influence Indigenous movement and lives. By interrogating representations of Native North Americans at two hobbyist festivals in Germany Judy demonstrates the importance of visual media representations and discourses on the opportunities available for Native people globally. Judy illustrates the colonial and imperial legacies that permeate German fascination with Native peoples while pointing to moments which provide opportunities for forging relationships, respect, and support

Vietnamese-American Masculinities, Hip-Hop, and the War 

In the United States, if rappers are stereotyped as overly-masculine, and East Asians are stereotyped as not-masculine-enough, then what kind of masculinities do East Asian-American rappers have? In this talk, Vang will problematize representations of the highest streamed male-identifying Vietnamese-American rappers within U.S. media. In doing so, he highlights various contradictions that arise when a predominantly white U.S. audience consumes the labor of racialized, feminized bodies whom fill roles opposite to their bodily constructions. Vang will also interrogate the processes that have influenced the West’s constructions of masculinity and Asianness, namely: orientalism and colonialism.