Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication Commons^™

Do Book Consumers Discriminate Against Black, Female, Or Young Authors?, Dana B. Weinberg, Adam Kapelner

Publications and Research

The publishing industry shows marked evidence of both gender and racial discrimination. A rational explanation for this difference in treatment of both female and Black authors might relate to the taste-based preferences of book consumers, who might be less willing to pay for books by such authors. We ran a randomized experiment to test for the presence of discriminatory preferences by consumers based on authors’ race, gender and/or age. We collected ratings of 25,201 book surveys across 9,072 subjects on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, making this study the largest experimental study of the book market to date. Subjects were presented with …

The Uncanny Swipe Drive: The Return Of A Racist Mode Of Algorithmic Thought On Dating Apps, Gregory Narr

Publications and Research

As algorithmic media amplify longstanding social oppression, they also seek to colonize every last bit of sociality where that oppression could be resisted. Swipe apps constitute prototypical examples of this dynamic. By employing protocols that foster absent-minded engagement, they allow unconscious racial preferences to be expressed without troubling users’ perceptions of themselves as non-racist. These preferences are then measured by recommender systems that treat “attractiveness” as a zero-sum game, allocate affective flows according to the winners and losers of those games, and ultimately amplify the salience of race as a factor of success for finding intimacy. In thus priming users …

Of Experts And Tokens: Mapping A Critical Race Archaeology Of Communication, Roopali Mukherjee

Publications and Research

A disgraceful white boys’ club persists within the field of Communication. Engaging key institutional structures and epistemic formations through which the field remains so white, this essay considers the mechanisms by which critical race and gender scholars are positioned as eternally foreign, always just arriving, to the field of communication. Addressing the implications of these “epistemologies of ignorance” on the development of the discipline, this essay outlines an intellectual and institutional archeology of Communication to reveal, instead, a field marked and shaped, from the start, by ethno-racial encounter. Communication, I suggest, remains so white because its experts and leaders continue …

The Making And Silencing Of “Axé-Ocracy” In Brazil: Black Women Writers’ Spiritual, Political And Literary Movement In São Paulo, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

In this article, I will focus on two influential writers from the south of Brazil, Cristiane Sobral who currently lives in Brasília, from Rio de Janeiro, and Conceição Evaristo who currently lives in Rio de Janeiro state, from Minas Gerais. I got to know them in São Paulo in 2015 at a public event: the “Afroétnica Flink! Sampa Festival of Black Thought, Literature and Culture.” I will include references to some of their younger contemporaries such as Raquel Almeida, Jenyffer Nascimento, and Elizandra Souza, all of whom reside in São Paulo, in order to illustrate the Black Brazilian women writers’ …

Postpartum Celebrity Images: Influence On Self- Thoughts And Appearance Management Behaviours Of Postpartum Women, Alyssa Dana Adomaitis, Kim K. P. Johnson

Publications and Research

Within previous decades, opinions about pregnancy and post-partum behaviour featured in various news articles and within popular literature emphasized issues related to pregnancy and liquor; campaigns against teen pregnancy; pregnancy and weight gain; and pregnancy and dieting behaviour. Attention has shifted from these issues to appearance-related topics including rapid weight loss, exercise regiments and food restriction. For example, photographs of celebrities have provided visual evidence that women can gain weight during pregnancy, give birth and within weeks revert to a thin, pre-pregnant body size. A qualitative method was used to explore to what extent, if any, images of post-partum celebrity …

La Comunicación Lingüística En Español Y Sus Barreras En El Sistema De Salud De Los Estados Unidos, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

La enseñanza del español con fines médicos en los Estados Unidos ha experimentado un crecimiento exponencial en las dos últimas décadas. Sin embargo, los pacientes de origen hispano se encuentran desprotegidos ante las barreras lingüísticas que impone el sistema de salud estadounidense en muchos contextos monolingües y bilingües. Esta investigación descriptiva muestra como, por un lado, los malentendidos producidos por la comunicación ineficiente desarrollada por intérpretes e intermediarios (familiares, enfermeras con conocimientos de español, facultativos con una preparación lingüística deficiente, etc.) tienen serias repercusiones para la salud en el tratamiento de los casos. Por otro lado, el estudio da cuenta …

Comparing Gender Discrimination And Inequality In Indie And Traditional Publishing, Dana B. Weinberg, Adam Kapelner

Publications and Research

In traditional publishing, female authors’ titles command nearly half (45%) the price of male authors’ and are underrepresented in more prestigious genres, and books are published by publishing houses, which determined whose books get published, subject classification, and retail price. In the last decade, the growth of digital technologies and sales platforms have enabled unprecedented numbers of authors to bypass publishers to publish and sell books. The rise of indie publishing (aka self-publishing) reflects the growth of the “gig” economy, where the influence of firms has diminished and workers are exposed more directly to external markets. Encompassing the traditional and …

Afroreggae And Grupo Cultural Afro Reggae: A Study Of The Early Years, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

The following study of AfroReggae and Grupo Cultural Afro Reggae (GCAR) calls attention to Brazilian presence and community organizing in the field of Hip Hop studies with a long memory framework: placing AfroReggae and GCAR in a long history of Africana resistance through music in Latin America. !990s GCAR group arises when reggae and Hip Hop music had become new global forms of solidarity among urban marginalized youths worldwide, making use of old and new strategies of social healing (Fernandes 2011). A close look at lyrics from the Hip Hop fusion band and the associated nonprofit organization shape the concepts …

Amanda Knox And Bella Figura, Denise Scannell Guida

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Intervention: Reality Tv, Whiteness, And Narratives Of Addiction, Jessie Daniels

Publications and Research

Purpose – Reality TV shows that feature embodied “transformations” are popular, including Intervention, a program that depicts therapeutic recovery from addiction to “health.” The purpose of this chapter is to address the ways whiteness constitutes narratives of addiction on Intervention.

Methodology – This analysis uses a mixed methodology. I conducted a systematic analysis of nine (9) seasons of one hundred and forty-seven (147) episodes featuring one hundred and fifty-seven individual “addicts” (157) and logged details, including race and gender. For the qualitative analysis, I watched each episode more than once (some, I watched several times) and took extensive notes on …

Gloria E. Anzaldúa’S Decolonizing Ritual De Conocimiento, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s work makes up one of the many Chican@ works that contribute another history, a history repressed by the national discourses on both sides of the border. Influenced by antecedents of U.S. Hispanic Literature who superposed “official” history with another history, Chicano activists had already enacted a retrieval of pre-conquest histories to revive their people’s historical consciousness. As Saldívar-Hull states in “Mestiza Consciousness and Politics: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/ La frontera,” the publication of Borderlands/ La Frontera distinguished itself from the Chicano movement’s as it unveiled the curtain that hid the Aztec goddesses and kept aspects of pre-conquest history …

Am I An Albanian American, Katherine Gregory

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

An Activist's Guide To Lesbian History: A Companion To The Video Not Just Passing Through, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

This guide, designed to accompany the video Not Just Passing Through, contains guidelines for conducting oral history, forms for donating material to mainstream and community based archives, and lessons for engaging lesbian history with activism.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgender, Polly Thistlethwaite, Daniel C. Tsang

Publications and Research

The proliferation of publications in the lesbian, Gay, bisexual, and transgender press has allowed the weaving of a well-informed network of previously isolated individuals and communities, empowering and unifying lesbian, gay, and other sexual minorities," Dan Tsang and Polly Thistlethwaite wrote in the introduction to the 'Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender' section of Katzes' 1995 edition of Magazines for Libraries. This title review of the queer periodicals of the day was intended to serve as a guide and justification for 'mainstream' libraries' collection building. The number and range of titles in Thistlethwaite and Tsang's collaborative entries (1989, 1992, and …

Lesbian And Gay, Polly Thistlethwaite, Daniel C. Tsang

Publications and Research

"The lesbian and gay press has shaped and reflected the rise of gay and lesbian liberation," Dan Tsang and Polly Thistlethwaite wrote in the introduction to the 'Lesbian and Gay' section of Katzes' 1992 edition of Magazines for Libraries. This title review of the queer periodicals of the day was intended to serve as a guide and justification for 'mainstream' libraries' collection building. The number and range of titles in Thistlethwaite and Tsang's collaborative entries (1989, 1992, and 1995) far exceeded any mainstream library collection known to either of the authors who were nevertheless hopeful that libraries would expand …

To Tell The Truth: The Lesbian Herstory Archives: Chronicling A People And Fighting Invisibility Since 1974, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

A portrait of the Lesbian Herstory Archives by a volunteer, describing the archive in its original home in Joan Nestle's Upper West Side New York City apartment that she shared with Mabel Hampton. Originally published in Out/Week Magazine.

Lesbian And Gay, Polly Thistlethwaite, Daniel C. Tsang

Publications and Research

"The time is past when librarians can assume no patron is lesbian or gay, or that there is no interest in gay research," Dan Tsang and Polly Thistlethwaite wrote in the introduction to the 'Lesbian and Gay' section of Katzes' 1989 edition of Magazines for Libraries. This title review of the queer periodicals of the day was intended to serve as a guide and justification for 'mainstream' libraries' collection building. The number and range of titles in Thistlethwaite and Tsang's collaborative entries (1989, 1992, and 1995) far exceeded any mainstream library collection known to either of the authors who …