Studying Beyoncé and Black Women in U.S. Popular Culture Pt. 1

A 57 Second Lecture

Lecture Transcript

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

Now granted, you aren’t getting any college credit or anything for watching this video.But you will sound really smart if you can apply some of its insights.

There are three pivotal things you need to do in order to approach Beyoncé and black women in U.S. popular culture as subjects of critical thought.

The first thing you need is a history lesson. The reason you need the history lesson is because you have to be able to recognize and be able to analyze the relationship between the historic and the contemporary social and material realities of those women who are racialized as black.

And in order to understand their representation, you have to understand the history—which brought those women to where they are.

Suggested Reading

Collins, Patricia Hill. 2009. “The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought.” Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. Routledge.

Davis, Angela. 1983. Women, Race & Class. Vintage.

For an application of this concept:

Miller-Young, Mirielle. 2014. A Taste For Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography. Duke University Press.