Beyond Hallie & Whoopi: Black Women and American Cinema--A Conversation

Wednesday, March 19th, 2008
12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
John Hope Franklin Center
Duke University
2204 Erwin Road
Room 240

WEDNESDAY AT THE CENTER:
BEYOND HALLIE AND WHOOPI: BLACK WOMEN AND AMERICAN CINEMA-A CONVERSATION

With a figure like Michele Obama poised to challenge America's perceptions of black women, journalist ESTHER IVEREM will discuss the ways that black women have been portrayed in recent cinema. Expanding on her recent book WE GOTTA HAVE IT: 20 YEARS OF SEEING BLACK AT THE MOVIES, 1986-2006, Iverem will discuss with activist and poet ALEXIS PAULINE GUMBS, the tensions associated with black female performances in mainstream cinema in a moment when black women's bodies are particularly marked as dangerous, oppositional, and non-traditional.

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Esther Iverem is a cultural critic, essayist and poet based in Washington D.C. Her most recent book is We Gotta Have It: Twenty Years of Seeing Black at the Movies, 1986-2006 (Thunder's Mouth Press), featuring more than 400 of her reviews, interviews and essays on the "new wave" of Black film. She is founder and editor of SeeingBlack.com, an award-winning Web site for Black critical voices on arts, media and politics. She is a former staff writer for The Washington Post, New York Newsday and The New York Times and is a contributing critic for BET.com and Tom Joyner's BlackAmericaWeb.com. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including a USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellowship, a National Arts Journalism Fellowship funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and an artist's fellowship from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. She is also the author of two books of poems and a member of the Washington Area Film Critics Association.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a 25 year old queer black trouble-maker. She is currently a doctoral candidate in English, Africana Studies and Women's Studies at Duke University Alexis is also a member of UBUNTU and the founder of BrokenBeautiful Press.

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Sponsored by "Center for the Study of Black Popular Culture" (CSBPC)