Amber George, Binghamton, New York, "What is the Million Dollar Message?: The Disempowerment of Disability, the Body, and Women in Million Dollar Baby."
Despite the politicized efforts of the disability rights movement, the independent living movement, advocates of disability culture and other such disability organizations, the struggle to reclaim the representation of disability as something more than tragedy, misfortune, and dysfunction persists. In contemporary media production, representation of disability continues to draw upon historical sites of oppression that characterize people with disabilities as marginal. This essay explores the cultural implications of depicting the newly disabled female protagonist of the film Million Dollar Baby as an appropriate candidate for euthanasia. In this instance, the cinematic experience is powerfully arranged by the management and deployment of disability as an undesirable deviation from normative existence. Using aspects from my own disability activism, coupled with feminist perspectives, I discuss the hegemony of normalcy that is pervasive in Western cinematic production. I also explore more acceptable portrayals of women with disabilities that counteract the showcasing of disability as an artistic metaphor of alienation, loss, and negativity. Drawing upon feminist philosophical reflections on disability, a cultural analysis of the film reveals the way in which gender connects with disability via the construction and reconstruction of the body, or in this case, the marginalization of the disabled female body. Films such as Million Dollar Baby display a kind of cultural entrapment in which embodiment, or the representation of the ‘normal' body exists in a dangerous dialectical play with the disabled body. The media's dissemination of disability tends to be largely inadequate, presenting social misapprehensions about the specifics of disability experience for the sake of dramatic portrayal. These images have a powerful effect on societal perception of disability and I argue that people with disabilities and society in general can not politically, socially, or economically afford to see a Hollywood film sentimentalize the killing of a woman with a disability.
Laura Ferguson-Walker, University of Windsor, London, Canada, "Examining the 'Systemic Choices' of Selling Sex: A Critical Discourse Analysis of CBC's Coverage of the Pickton Murder Trial."
It is undisputable that sex sells. Perhaps no one knows this fact more than the 26 women, a majority of whom were First Nations aboriginals, who worked in the sex trade industry and were killed at the hands of Canada 's most notorious serial killer Robert Pickton. However, as this trial nears completion it is imperative to ask: what role has the Canadian broadcasting corporation (CBC), a crown corporation and Canada's national radio and television broadcaster, played in ‘selling sex'? Throughout CBC's coverage of the Pickton trial all 26 women have been defined collectively by their association with Vancouver's downtown eastside, arguably Canada's most poverty-stricken and at-risk neighbourhood, many, if not all of these women were substance abusers and as such depended on the sex trade to subsidize their habit. This paper uses the methodology of critical discourse analysis (Van Dijk; Huckin) as well as gender theory to examine CBC's role in administering moral codes and values surrounding issues of prostitution at the expense of eliciting insight surrounding issues of poverty, women's health, homelessness, racism and sexual abuse. As such, these news reports further perpetuate myths regarding women's ‘choice' to become involved in the sex trade industry and strengthen societal stigmatization and discrimination towards women who are compelled to sell their bodies for sex, no matter what the cost.
Jeremy M. Lillig, Full Circle Theatre Company, Kansas City, Missouri, "Whispers from the Streets: The Misrepresentation of Homeless and Poverty-stricken Women in the Media."
In 2003 I spent a year conducting research and over 150 interviews with men and women in extreme poverty or who were homeless. This presentation would present excerpts from my original play, the culmination of that research. The purpose of the Whispers from the Streets project is to raise social awareness of the plight of homelessness and to shatter stereotypes concerning those who are homeless and in extreme poverty. The excerpts presented would showcase women of the world of poverty. Often misrepresented in media, the plight of women is especially difficult. This live performance reading would show this journey in a unique form and instigate discussion on a topic often ignored in the media. The piece would also showcase the absurdity the media perpetuates in such issues of social justice and how the dignity of the individual is lost in the sensationalism of news to provide information and entertainment. The performance would feature a short presentation on my research and the representation of women of poverty in the media, and would feature readings from the play.
Moderator: Elizabeth Doggett, University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, New York.
Sara Ann Howard, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, New York, "Sex and the City Feminism? Oh My!"
This paper will analyze the dangerous repercussions of mainstreaming feminism to catchy songs and go-girl high-fives without providing anything of further substance. It is my argument that shows like Sex and the City provide a false sense of equality and empowerment. The negative repercussions affect all women but perhaps most affected are young girls, especially those who are sexually active and women of color. By making these four women the ultimate symbol of empowerment, what then becomes of those women and girls these women do not represent? Furthermore, even when one can identify along lines of race, class, gender identification and sexual orientation, what sort of empowerment and equality is the show really selling? Even in the aftermath of the show's cancellation, its cultural significance has not diminished. The show is still in mass syndication, being bought and sold in the form of videos and DVDs, and being translated and sold globally. Pop culture artifacts, such as newspaper and magazine articles, blogs, online social networking sites and the like, along with other scholarly pieces, will be used to analyze how shows like Sex and the City function as pseudo-feminism in the lives of young women.
Bryan Robinson, University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, New York, "Gender, Race, and Companionship in Magazine Advertising."
This project involves a critical analysis of the depiction of couples and groups within mainstream mass media. In particular I am examining the notions of companionship and couplehood with regard to gender and race. This early version relies on non-random sampling of magazine advertisements and is geared toward the exploration of how African American women are depicted in intimate groups such as families, couples and friends. This work is still in the theoretical and exploratory stage so I intend to engage the audience in discussion of media images (via power point presentation) that demonstrate racial differences in how women are portrayed in intimate groupings. Themes to be analyzed include depictions of parenting models, ideal couples, and friendship cliques.
Menoukha Case, University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, New York, "Really Terrifying, or Terrifically Real? Representing and Living Santeria."
Nineteenth-century ‘scientific' race and sexuality theories were posited simultaneously by the same set of scientists, and intertwined to racialize gender and sexualize race. This hierarchical epistemological system still informs the contemporary U.S. cultural imaginary through figures of African and African Diaspora religious practitioners who appear on TV and the silver screen. In this paper I follow a timeline of media representations, including news accounts of interacting actual and fictional events, to consider the demonized figure of the Santero as an embodied site where Afrophobia and homophobia meet. While Afrophobia tends towards hypermasculinizing and hyperfemininizing, the inter-raced, inter-sexualized figure of the Santero is shrouded in the vexed and sliding cloak of “invert,” rousing terror in films by making miscegenation deviant. At the same time, actual Santeria communities serve as performative homes, or perfomative families, where, relative to the outside world, race and gender are ritually dismantled and at least set aside. Since “basements in the Bronx ,” as Jacqui Alexander put it, is where this successful resistance to the nuclear heterosexist norm is often lived, class becomes a powerful determinant. In this way grass-roots culture-making displaces and challenges the dominance of media.
Moderator: Christine Nealon, University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, New York.
Andrew Horvitz, University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, New York, "Talk Radio and the Political Public Sphere: The Short Life of 'Women's' Radio on the Greenstone Media Network."
As argued by Arato and Cohen, feminism has been novel as an instantiation of a public sphere because of its ability to transcend Habermas' distinction between the system world (the state and the economy) and the life world (civil society and the family). In late summer 2006, Greenstone media was launched and it promised to deliver “talk the way women want”. Programming of this sort offers, I argue, a space, both alternative to, and within the milieu of political talk radio currently being broadcast. This paper focuses on the potentials of a feminist public sphere gaining political efficacy and legitimacy through the use of media, namely radio broadcast.
leigh vandebogart, University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, New York, "Violent Representations: Abu Ghraib and Graffiti."
Violence, and its multiple representations, has been the focus of my research for the past year and a half. Currently, I am most interested in how violence works and is understood through apparatuses such as the nation-state, the military, and technology. Specifically looking at the Abu Ghraib dossier, I am interested in further exploring how gender, sexuality, and the idea of citizenry and community impacts how people view (or “read”) such inherently violent photographs, and how viewers of violence are implicated in violent representations. In this presentation, I will focus on analyzing a selection of photographs from the Abu Ghraib dossier and exploring the ways in which one can begin to create a resistant dialogue to such inherently violent representations. Through looking at different instances of graffiti, which are in direct response to various Abu Ghraib images, I will begin to explore the ways in which people can resist their own implications in violence when viewing such representations. I will explore the ways in which graffiti can be understood as a violent act, and how this sort of subversive and revolutionary violence can, in fact, subvert the deeply problematic, oppressive, and torturous photographs of Abu Ghraib.
Liz Springate, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, "'Collective sites of democratic enunciation': Digital storytelling and resistance narratives within anti-rape programs."
Autobiographical accounts of resisting sexual violence have been integrated into feminist-led self-defense programs within the broader context of anti-rape activism since the 1960s. My paper investigates the ways in which digital storytelling can be incorporated into anti-violence programs not only to document and preserve such narratives, but to provide opportunities for peer education, advocacy, and community healing through media making. I approach digital storytelling as a distinct, historically specific genre that combines easy-to-use digital media making tools with the development of community-based anti-violence initiatives. I locate digital storytelling workshops as key “collective sites of democratic enunciation” (Mardorossian, 2002), in which survivors of sexual violence confront and challenge dominant representations of its perpetration and explore what it means to “resist” and “survive” through their own production of digital narratives—3-5 minute digital videos that assemble family photos, home movie clips, and drawings together with sound clips and a scripted voice-over. I treat such stories as autobiographical statements about the systemic sources of sexual violence that, through digital media making, become part of a larger, advocacy-based collective practice. In the process, digital storytelling may rework the very language and powers of representation so central to anti-rape advocacy.
Tara L. Conley, Texas Woman's University, Denton, Texas, "Virtual Volunteers: Hurricane Katrina's Impact and Women's Resolve."
My research focuses on a new form of twenty-first century activism I call virtual volunteering. Virtual volunteering is when community activism/support and grassroots organizing is conducted via the World Wide Web. More specifically, my research focuses on hurricane Katrina networking relief blogs, newsgroups, and Internet forums that are operated and utilized mainly by single mothers in search of assistance for their families. These virtual spaces are fascinating pieces of historical evidence that reveal not only the horrific impact of hurricane Katrina, but also the ineffectiveness of government sponsored assistant programs like TANF and FEMA. Some of the voices echoing through the blogs share similar sentiments regarding their current state of living and their dwindling confidence in government agencies such as FEMA. My research focuses on Katrina survivors, specifically single mothers, and how they have found ways and means beyond government assistance. If anything, these networking forums provide a place where women can connect with other women and families. These virtual spaces not only provide material and monetary assistance, they also seem to be a necessary and comforting place to congregate.
Moderator: Anne Lin, University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, New York.