Presented by Chenjerai Kumanyika, assistant professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University.
Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika will discuss how his approach to critical media studies attempts to address a scholarly, material, and media environment where patient, objective analysis and creative, politically responsive knowledge production is sorely needed. Through examples of his own research and narrative journalism that covers issues ranging from policing and state violence in places such as Ferguson, South Carolina, Charlottesville, and Philadelphia to the production of Gimlet Media’s Peabody-winning Uncivil podcast, Dr. Kumanyika will explore the limitations, methods, and promises of engaged scholarship.
Dr. Kumanyika will also discuss his current book project on Hip-Hop Media Solidarities. The momentum of racial and gender-focused justice movements, technological innovation, and the concentration of wealth in promotional and philanthropic institutions have created the conditions for the emergence of a highly visible young black managerial strata and a new politics of race, mediated capitalist extraction, and social control. The talk will explore the expanding complex of what Dr. Kumanyika calls “Hip-hop Media Solidarities”—sometimes well-intentioned, mediated performances of solidarity with the working class by young black celebrities that include philanthropy, appearances, entertainment products, public statements, and entrepreneurial efforts. Dr. Kumanyika will explore the primary arguments and some cases from his book on the topic describing how these solidarities interact with and extract from specific social justice campaigns.
About Chenjerai Kumanyika
Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika is a researcher, journalist, and activist who works as an assistant professor at Rutgers University’s Department of Journalism and Media Studies. His research and teaching focus on the intersections of social justice and emerging media in the cultural and creative industries. He writes about these issues in journals such as Popular Music & Society, Popular Communication, Popular Music, and Pedagogy and Education.
In the realm of public scholarship, Chenjerai is the co-executive producer and co-host and of Gimlet Media’s new Peabody award-winning history podcast “Uncivil,” a consultant and guest contributor to Scene on Radio’s Peabody award nominated Seeing White series. Chenjerai has also contributed to public media such as Transom, NPR Codeswitch, All Things Considered. Invisibilia, The Moth, Vice, Rising Up Radio with Sonali Kolhatkar. His January 2015 article on Vocal Color in Public Radio produced for Transom.org spawned a nationwide discussion of diversity and voices in public media.