Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 914

Gun Owner: 'One shot, one deer. Senator, I'd be a pretty bad hunter if I needed an assault rifle.'

Craig Watkins - Democratic Futures: Mobilizing Voices, and Remixing Youth Participation

DML Research Hub  Craig Watkins, conference chair for the 2013 Digital Media and Learning Conference, explains the conference's thematic focus on civic participation - "Democratic Futures: Mobilizing Voices, and Remixing Youth Participation."
(1:17) "I think this conference is an opportunity for the digital media and learning community to help complicate the narrative that young people are disengaged, that young people do not participate. And to provide evidence, examples, and models of the ways in which youth activism in this country--and, certainly, around the world--are quite robust."
The conference will be held March 14-16, 2013 in Chicago, Illinois. The conference is supported by the MacArthur Foundation and organized by the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub located at the University of California's systemwide Humanities Research Institute at UC Irvine.
More details about the DML2013 Conference and Call For Papers can be found at the conference website: dml2013.dmlhub.net.
Craig is interviewed in this video by Howard Rheingold, a cyberculture pioneer, social media innovator, and author of "Smart Mobs."

 

The Stream: Women as Agents of Change

The Stream
Maybe one person can’t change the world, but they can try to change the attitudes in their country. As International Women’s Day approaches, The Stream takes a look at women who are changing minds and laws, and empowering people to take a chance and do something for good for everyone.

In this episode of The Stream, we speak to:

Alyse Nelson @AlyseNelson
President and CEO, Vital Voices Global Partnership
vitalvoices.org

Marina Pisklakova-Parker
Director, ANNA National Center for Violence Prevention
anna-center.ru

Linda Swana @VocesVitalesGua
Guatemalan civil society activist
guateamala.org

Duke Theologian Ebrahim Moosa on Scholarship, Advocacy, and Activism

Franklin Humanities
Professor Ebrahim Moosa discusses his involvement in human rights discourse in his native South Africa.

One Hood Media Academy: The Class (episode 1)

One Hood Media Academy
We're not a class, we're THE class. You won't believe what we did last week at One Hood Media Academy, but we got to meet Chuck D from Public Enemy! I've been listening to his music for most of my life, my dad would always have it playing in the car. You can believe the hype. Check out the One Hood Media website @ http://1hood.org

New Web Series: truth. be. told.—Documenting the Lives of Queer Black Visionaries

Truth. Be. Told. is a documentary series that seeks to reclaim the birthright of Queer Black visionaries within our families and communities by providing a platform for out, Black LGBTQI-SGL-TS people to tell their personal stories of challenge, radical self-inquiry, transformation, and triumph
About the Writer/Director Katina Parker My name is Katina Parker. Some of you may know me from my years as a communications strategist for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC), and Southerners on New Ground (SONG). My background is filmmaking, photography, design, writing, and activism. As a part of my communications training, I also have an expertise in social media campaigns, messaging, and traditional media strategies. Present-day, I am an instructor at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University; I am the writer/producer/ director for a film called Peace Process , which airs regularly on The Documentary Channel; and I am working on a touring exhibit and book called  One Million Strong , which features my photos from the Million Man, Million Women, and Million Youth Marches.
To Support

Musicians @ Google: Bilal

AtGoogleTalks
Grammy-nominated artist Bilal visits Google NYC for an interview and exclusive acoustic performance of tracks from his new album, A Love Surreal, which debuted as the top R&B/Soul album on iTunes on its February 26th release (Purpose Music Group/eOne).

The Interview
- For the first 20 minutes, Bilal shares his experience collaborating with Dr. Dre, singing one of his first background gigs, going through the creative process, and more.

The Music (starts at 20:18)
- Known for his live performances, Bilal delivers incredible acoustic takes on these tracks:

1. "Back to Love" (A Love Surreal)
2. "Longing and Waiting" (A Love Surreal)
3. "Never Be the Same" (A Love Surreal)
4. "All Matter" (Airtight's Revenge)

Bilal Oliver - vocals, guitar
Dai Miyazaki - guitar
Corey Bernhard - keys

Remixing Science: Raquel Cepeda's ‘Bird of Paradise’

Remixing Science: Raquel Cepeda's ‘Bird of Paradise’ by David J. Leonard | HuffPost Black Voices
Raquel Cepeda is hip-hop. Her work, her experiences, and her voice encapsulate the history and aesthetics of the hip-hop generation. Cepeda, a leading journalist whose work has appeared in People, the Associated Press, The Village Voice, MTV News, CNN.com, has shaped the conversation about hip-hop for decades. Her film, Bling: A Planet Rock , "takes a hard-hitting look at how the flashy world of commercial hip-hop played a significant role in the 10-year civil war in Sierra Leone, West Africa" and her edited collection And It Don't Stop: The Best Hip-Hop Journalism of the Last 25 Years are two significant works within the hip-hop landscape. A career of reflecting on artistry, identity, culture, and a generation looking for voice, Cepeda turns inward with her memoir Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina (Atria Books, 2013). Telling the story of a young women whose life was turned upside down over and over again, Bird of Paradise is her story of redemption, of a her search to understand her identity in a society that told her over and over again that she did not matter.
Bird of Paradise speaks to the growing intersections of ethnography, memoir and science. It points to the changing nature of looking backward not only for exploring personal histories but those of the communities. The work points to a growing willingness among the hip-hop generation to push aside conventions, to expose personal vulnerability and uncertainty alongside of scientific discovery.
At one level it is a story of hip-hop, and how it influenced her life. Hip-hop offered acceptance otherwise unavailable outside of paradise. As with many books on the history of hip-hop and memoirs about members of the hip-hop generation, Cepeda highlights the environmental factors that gave rise to the hip-hop generation. Violence, alienation, invisibility and failing schools all shaped Cepeda's childhood, which was defined by instability resulting from abandonment, abuse, and difficulty finding acceptance and peace. For Cepeda these painful experiences didn't simply define her childhood but contributed to her love of hip-hop, which spoke to her, have her voice, and provided a nurturing home that had been absent through her early years.

Where others sought to define her identity, to see her as a wanna-be, neither white nor black, as stuck-up, where society sought to render her voice, her passion, and her joy invisible, hip-hop provided hope and power. Bird of Paradise speaks to the importance hip-hop has on a generation. It provided her with the tools to navigate the sometimes-competing demands of "the old-school social and cultural standards of our parents, their respective homelands, and this American one, the latter growing increasingly hostile to our presence." Hip-Hop, from Public Enemy to Spoken Word, from graffiti to journalism, provided a path through the trials and tribulations associated with the double consciousness and the contradictions that defined her early life. Her work as a journalist, her contributions as a documentarian and the book itself are the flower that sprouted from the seeds planted by hip-hop. She writes,
I want to come and go as I please and continue to flow in hip-hop's current without being questioned by someone who doesn't get it. I want to write like Robert Christgau and Joan Morgan and Greg Tate, and Lisa Jones, all journalists whose contributions to the Village Voice replaced the played-out textbooks I barely cracked open as a high school senior at the onset of the 1990s. I develop my voice and begin to write for papers and magazines about hip-hop and R & B music and cultural criticism (136).
As a memoir, it is not simply a story of herself, but of Latina women growing up in New York City (and the Dominican Republic) in the 1970s and 1980s. It is a story of migration and stagnation, love and sorrow. It is a story of blackness and whiteness; it is a tale of borderlands and isolation, race and ethnicity, struggle and perseverance. Her story begins and ends in Paradise. While still a baby, she was sent to live with her grandparents, in the Paraíso (Paradise) district of Santo Domingo, which proved to "be an idyllic reprieve in her otherwise fraught childhood." It is no wonder that in the face of family and friends denying her connections and identity, that Cepeda fought to reclaim this personal and familial story.
It is a story of identity, whereupon Cepeda faced daily challenges to her place within America's racially stratified society. Her playing tennis and the piano leaves some kids positioning her as a "white girl," yet clearly America and its institutions imagine Cepeda on different terms.
Cepeda grew up recognizing a kaleidoscope of features representing the world in her own face and on the faces of other Latinos in her Washington Heights/Inwood neighborhood. As an adult she was mistaken for being from everywhere but her parents' island of Hispaniola both in the United States and when she travelled abroad. This, along her once-estranged father's own rejection of who he was, piqued Cepeda's curiosity about where ancestors came from before they became Dominican (press materials)
The book is ultimately a beautiful story of reconciliation and redemption. Not only does Cepeda document her evolving relationship with her father and the persistent difficulties with her mother, but her own quest to understand her own identity and the broader history of her family. In fact, the violence and trauma that she documents in her book fuels her desire to find out "where she came from," to understand her families history and identity. "I've been too busy running away from the violence and abandonment that marked a big chunk of my life to revisit it," writes Cepeda. "As resolved as I was to forget the past, I found myself determined to excavate it." She goes about documenting this family history, exploring migration patterns and her family's story, yet does so not simply through looking in the past through stories and archival information, but through science. "By using the science of ancestral DNA test," Raquel Cepeda "pieces together the puzzle of our history that eluded me all these years: our ancestral origins. All it took was one scape" (148). Here lies a larger piece of the story Cepeda tells that takes her beyond scabs and DNA laboratories, but to the Dominican Republic, to Guinea-Bissau, to indigenous communities throughout the Caribbean. Her life story points to the unique history of Latina/o; it points to racial borderlands, the impact of movement and migration, and the many ways that society renders Latina/o invisible.
The categories of black and white, the designations afforded to Latinos, erase the complex familial and ancestral stories that define the United States. Using her own story, science, and history, Cepeda weaves together a powerful story that shines light on the power of personal discovery. Bird of Paradise is a book where hip-hop meets the human genome project, a remix of the Discovery channel. Whereas science often speaks to the significance of scientific inquiry through the abstract quest for truth, Cepeda shows that personal truth is a source of liberation.
The power of the book rests with its ability to document the personal and the scientific travels; its strength rests with its blending of memoir and "objective" scientific discovery. Its strength rests with its vulnerability and introspection, its ability to provide view to her open heart and mind even as Cepeda opens up her DNA portfolio. The beauty of the work rests with its prose, which is beautiful throughout. The complexity captured in Cepeda's words is noteworthy: "For some excavating the past isn't an adventure, its more akin to tearing a Band-Aid off an open wound. Still, I didn't have the time to wait..." (205). In another sport she writes, "I nod and smile at folks waiting for family members. Dominicans carry within them the history of the island in their phenotypes as much as they do in the blood" (212). Reflecting the richness and depth of her writing she is able to convey the beauty in and trauma of history, its impact on identity, and its meaning within her own story.
In the end, Bird of Paradise is a story of her relationship with her father, which is difficult and complex, beautiful and inspiring. Her travels and DNA exploration are part of the story to reclaim her self and her relationships with both her parents. Yet, her relationship with her mother, while equally complex, is ultimately sad, leaving me wanting her Mom to read this book, to see Cepeda's talents and the beauty of her story so that she too can walk a path toward a redemptive relationship. Her story compels tears and laughter, anger and sadness, joy and hope, wanting to see her find peace. It points to the power of self-discovery and looking backwards to find peace.
***
David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He is the author of the just released After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop (SUNY Press) as well as several other works. Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan, layupline, Feminist Wire, and Urban Cusp. He is frequent contributor to Ebony, Slam, and Racialicious as well as a past contributor to Loop21, The Nation and The Starting Five. He blogs @No Tsuris.

Left of Black S2:E21 | Sex, Power & Desire in an Age of ‘Scandal’

Left of Black S2:E21 | Sex, Power & Desire in an Age of ‘Scandal’
In 1968 Bronx-born actress Dianne Carrollhelped transition a new era in network television starring in the sitcom Julia.  Premiering during the height of the Civil Rights Movement and only months after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Julia broke new ground in its depiction of a Black female lead who was a professional and not simply a domestic.
Forty-four years after the premiere of Julia, Kerry Washington, another Bronx-born actress, debuted in the role of “Olivia Pope” on the hour-long drama Scandal, created and executive produced by, Shonda Rhimes, an African American woman.
The vastly different worlds that “Julia” and “Olivia Pope” inhabit are an index of the visibility of the interior lives of Black women in the public sphere. If Black women are perceived as a site of visual excess in mainstream culture, as Nicole Fleetwood argues in her recent book Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness, than the fictional “Olivia Pope” (based on the real Judy Smith ) is the embodiment of that excess on network television.
Professor Brittney Cooper, Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University and Professor Treva Blaine Lindsey, Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Missouri at Columbia join Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal in a spirited conversation about sex, power and desire in Scandal and the lives of Black women.
***
Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

Marco McMillian: Murder of Passion or Hate?