Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 757

Preview—August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand

The first documentary about the Tony- and Pulitzer-winning playwright August Wilson premieres on PBS on Friday, February 20 at 9 pm. The film is a co-production of THIRTEEN’s American Masters series and WQED.American.

To Get to Hollywood, Make a Left at YouTube: An Interview with Issa Rae

'For the second edition of From the Hills to the Valley - our series comparing Hollywood and Silicon Valley - we spoke to someone who belongs to both worlds. Issa Rae created and stars in The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, an award-winning series on YouTube. This month, she released a memoir by the same name, and is working on a pilot for HBO.' -- Marketplace

“You gotta testify because the booty don’t lie”: The (Il)Legality of Black Womanhood @ #DukeShondaLand

“You gotta testify because the booty don’t lie”: The (Il)Legality of Black Womanhood with Karla FC Holloway (Duke), Blair L. M. Kelley (NC State), Martha Jones (Michigan), Jessica Marie Johnson (Michigan State), and Brittney Cooper (Rutgers). ShondaLand the Symposium was held at Duke University on January 30, 2015 and sponsored by the Forum for Scholars and Publics and the Center for Arts, Digital Culture & Entrepreneurship.

What Nielsen Knows? Indexing Black Consumer Power

Nielsen—the company that measures and monitors television viewing—highlights Black consumer power in a series of conversations with four Black Millennials. 

CFP: Black Code Studies—The Black Scholar Special Issue on Digital Black Studies

"Kid Code" courtesy John JenningsCFP: Black Code Studies
The Black Scholar Special Issue on Digital Black Studies

Editors:Jessica Marie Johnson, Assistant Professor, Michigan State UniversityMark Anthony Neal, Professor, Duke University
The editors of this special issue argue black studies, activism, and life online and off have reached a critical point of convergence. Technology has irrevocably changed the way artists, activists, scholars, and users rage against codes and binaries of race and tech. People of African descent around the world have appropriated digital and social media as tools for organizing, self-actualization, consciousness-raising, community building, and outright political revolt. At the same time, organizing strategies and intellectual production across digital media and platforms traffic in racializing assemblages rooted in both antiblackness and historic modes of black resistance–even among users who do not identify as “black.”
Black Code Studies asks: How has that cold and scientific concreteness that was and is nineteenth-century race theory persisted? How do certain racial ideologies and narratives thrive—including twentieth-century narratives of blackness and whiteness as biopolitical binaries? To what extent have race codes and coding evolved? How do these changes interface with the work of race coders—digital activists, digital feminists, and digital black studies scholars—who continue to demand new pathways for safety and survival in the face of abject violence? What are the limits of 21st century digital black coding, even when rooted in resistance and affirming black life?
As a project, Black Code Studies draws attention to the permeability of the racial subject in an age of digital media and new technology. It highlights the importance of tying technology to a history of capitalist exploitation, global black insurgence, and Afrxdiasporic creative energy. Black Code Studies outlines a rich and rigorous set of priorities for the next future of black studies, highlighting prospects for the survival of black life well beyond the Internet.

We are seeking submissions on a variety of topics including but NOT limited to:
Online/Hashtag ActivismBlack and Radical Womyn of Color Feminisms#BlackLivesMatterGames and Nerds of ColorBlack Codes and Race CodesAfrofuturism/Speculative FictionDigital Black Studies and PedagogyRadical MediaReviews of Digital Projects/MediaHacking RaceTechnology and Art/MusicIndependent x Mainstream Media

We are also seeking submissions in a variety of formats including but NOT limited to digital performance and performativity, social networking and social media, blogs and blog posts, Storifys, Twitterchats, archives, exhibits, and more.
250 word abstracts should be received by March 15, 2015. Completed submissions should be received by May 1, 2015. Submit all materials via email to blackcodestudies@gmail.com.

Direct questions and inquiries to:Mark Anthony Neal, dr-yogi@att.netJessica Marie Johnson, jmj@msu.edu

One Playwright's 'Obligation' To Confront Race And Identity In The US

Actress Amber Gray in An Octoroon'Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has written a trilogy of provocative and fantastical explorations of race. His latest, based on a 1859 melodrama, pokes fun at conventions while raising difficult questions.' -- NPR

Jason Moran + Meshell Ndegeocello Channel Fats Waller: "The Joint is Jumpin'"

Jason Moran and Meshell Ndegecello perform Fats Waller's "The Joint is Jumpin'" at Harlem's Lenox Lounge.

As Study Finds 4,000 Lynchings in Jim Crow South, Will U.S. Address Legacy of Racial Terrorism?

A new report has uncovered shocking details about the history of lynchings in the United States and their legacy today. After five years of exhaustive research and interviews with local historians and descendants of lynching victims, the Equal Justice Initiative found white Southerners lynched nearly 4,000 black men, women and children between 1877 and 1950. We speak with attorney and Equal Justice Initiative founder and director Bryan Stevenson, whose group’s report is "Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror." -- Democracy Now

Blank on Blank: B.B. King on The Blues

"The early years when I was starting, blues player, you wasn’t always welcome in a lot of the other places. People usually have preconceived ideas about blues music," B.B. King interviewed by Joe Smith on September 5, 1986

Actress Victoria Rowell Discusses Suit Against CBS

Actress Victoria Rowell, who spent nearly 20 years on the soap opera "The Young and the Restless" has filed a suit against CBS for alleged retaliation after leaving. Rowell and her attorney join Arise America to discuss her reasons for the suit and leaving CBS. -- Arise America