Apr 6 2021

Feminisms Lunch Lecture: in ℅: Black women

Feminisms Lunch Lectures

April 6, 2021

11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Location

Zoom

Calendar

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Andrea Yarbrough smiling. The text includes the titles of their research projects and the date, time, and RSVP link for the event.

Join us for a presentation by UIC Museum and Exhibition Studies graduate student Andrea Yarbrough:

With over 30,000 vacant lots throughout the City of Chicago, there is a unique ecological opportunity for public space and the future of deemed "blighted" or vacant land. When adequately nourished, there are possibilities to foster a greater sense of place and promote sustainable, restorative living for disenfranchised communities on the South Side of Chicago and beyond. in ℅: Black women (in care of: Black women) takes up this task bringing together poets, curators, farmers, mamas, dancers, organizers, teachers, cultural producers, youth, and visual artists, to collectively regenerate vacant lots as sites of care. By constructing functionally designed objects with sculptural elements, cultivating land, archiving and documenting histories of local women, and curating exhibitions and public programs, this socially-engaged practice exemplifies how communities can reclaim and reactivate their surroundings while navigating agency and ownership over vacant land.

The presentation will be followed by a response from Dr. Kishonna L. Gray, Assistant Professor of Gender and Women's Studies and Communication, as well as audience Q&A.

CART live captioning will be provided. Please send any questions or additional accommodation requests to wlrc@uic.edu.

WLRC's Feminisms Lunch Lectures series offers faculty, graduate students, visiting scholars, and activists an opportunity to present their projects, ideas, and works-in-progress on a wide range of topics and engage participants in lively and provocative discussion. For the Spring 2021 semester, WLRC is partnering with the Gender and Women’s Studies department to feature UIC graduate students whose current research, creative, or community projects engage feminist movements and scholarship.

Note: Due to unforeseen circumstances, Alkebuluan Merriweather will be unable to join us. We hope to reschedule her presentation on The Black Matriarch Archive in the fall.

Contact

WLRC

wlrc@uic.edu

Date posted

Mar 12, 2021

Date updated

Apr 2, 2021

Speakers

Andrea Yarbrough | Graduate Student, Museum and Exhibition Studies | University of Illinois at Chicago

Andrea Yarbrough is a second-year graduate student studying Museum and Exhibitions Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Their research asks how we might reactivate neglected spaces as sites of care through a blend of art praxis, civic engagement, and urban agriculture. She is a steward of in ℅: Black women (in care of Black women), a creative placekeeping initiative anchored on the southside of Chicago, collaboratively building functional sculptural objects and cartographies of care. Andrea was named a 2020 Mentee through the AFIELD Network and received a 2020 Shared Placemaking Grant through LISC and the Mars-Wrigley Foundation for her work with in ℅: Black women.

Dr. Kishonna L. Gray | Assistant Professor, Gender and Women's Studies and Communication | University of Illinois at Chicago

Dr. Kishonna L. Gray (@kishonnagray) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois - Chicago. She is also a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. She also previously served as a MLK Scholar and Visiting Professor in Women and Gender Studies and Comparative Media Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Gray is an interdisciplinary, intersectional, digital media scholar and digital herstorian whose areas of research include identity, performance and online environments, embodied deviance, cultural production, video games, and Black Cyberfeminism. Dr. Gray is completing a manuscript, tentatively titled Intersectional Tech: The Transmediated Praxis of Black Users in Digital Gaming (LSU Press, 2020). Intersectional tech can be understood as the visual, textual, and/or oral engagement of the Black body in transmediated spaces, focusing on the critical deconstruction of the exploited, hypervisible, labor of any associated Black performances (online and ‘IRL’). Dr. Gray is also the author of Race, Gender, & Deviance in Xbox Live (Routledge, 2014) which as been described by T.L. Taylor as “an insightful, original, and compelling piece of research.” And also described by Tressie McMillan Cottom as “an important contribution to the sociology of race in the digital era.” Dr. Gray is also the co-editor of two volumes on culture and gaming. Feminism in Play (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2018), which focuses on women as they are depicted in video games, as participants in games culture, and as contributors to the games industry, and Woke Gaming (University of Washington Press, 2018) which illustrates the power and potential of video games to foster change and become a catalyst for social justice. Dr. Gray has published in a variety of outlets across disciplines: New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, Information, Communication, & Society, Sociology Compass, Bulletin of Science, Technology, & Society, and others. She has also been featured in public outlets such as The Guardian, The Telegraph, The New York Times, Business Insider, CNET, BET, and others. Follow Dr. Gray on Twitter @KishonnaGray or on Snapchat @DrGrayThaPhx

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