Studying Beyoncé and Black Women in U.S. Popular Culture Pt. 3

A 57 Second Lecture

Lecture Transcript

I’m Nikki Lane and I’m going to be your professor.

The last thing you need to do is recognize the other issues: issues of class, status, beauty, age, ablebodiedness, sexuality that may be relevant to a particular image, as well as to the lived experiences of individuals who, again, are being pointed to by that representation of black women.

Be able to approach issues of race and gender, and the relationship between the two, as always and already about other modes of social and cultural differences.

To truly consider Beyoncé’s body of work, to really analyze it critically, we have to attend to the ways that these issues interact and influence the way black women experience the world and the way black women are represented.

Suggested Reading

Johnson, E. Patrick. Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003.

Mask, Mia. 2009. Divas on Screen: Black Women in American Film. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Sullivan, L.L., 2000. “Chasing Fae: The Watermelon Woman and Black Lesbian Possibility.” Callaloo, 23(1): 448-460.

Harris, Angelique, and Omar Mushtaq. 2013. “Creating Racial Identities through Film: A Queer and Gendered Analysis of Blaxploitation Films.”  Western Journal of Black Studies 37 (1):28-38.

DeClue, Jennifer. 2011. “Lesbian Cop, Queer Killer: Leveraging Black Queer Women’s Sexuality on HBO’s The Wire.”  The Spectator 31 (2):53.