Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

Please join the UF Mellon Intersections Group on Global Blackness and Latinx Identity in welcoming the first speaker in the Beyond Borders, Across Boundaries: Black and LatinX Knowledge Formations Speaker Series:

Ralina Joseph, University of Washington.

Ralina L. Joseph is an associate professor of Communication, and adjunct associate professor of American Ethnic Studies and Gender, Women, Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington, is also the founding director of the Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity.

Dr. Joseph will offer insightful examination of the media landscape and its impact on African American women. Using the experiences of Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey and television producer Shonda Rhimes, media scholar Joseph explores the lives of women whose professions are intricately tied to the production and dissemination of their image and an identity that finds itself, consistently, under attack and/or effusively celebrated.  Pinpointing societal responses and behaviors that careen from public acceptance to public outcry, Joseph examines the role, public personalities in a media saturated society play and how prominent African American women negotiate an uncertain terrain through their response to overt and subtle forms of hostility.

Joseph’s findings speak to the African American experience as well as broader societal circumstances in which an individual is the one or only person in the uncomfortable position of shouldering the responsibility of representing their race, gender or sexual orientation.

Joseph will also be speaking at 4:30 pm. Read more about that event HERE.