Intersectional Media: Representations of Marginalized Identities

(Hardback)

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Description

Intersectional Media: Representations of Marginalized Identities analyzes media depictions of a variety of intersecting identities. Through a study examining how components of identity such as race, class, ethnicity, age, ability, class, and sexuality mesh and form a unique worldview, contributors to this collection frame their understanding of media intersectionality as complex and multi-layered studies of identity. Rather than focusing on any one component of marginalized identity, this book broadens the scope of inquiry and encourages audiences to recognize the complexity of media analysis when a combination of marginalized identities is depicted. Contributors demonstrate their understanding of how different components of identity combine and create new, original components of identity, paving the way for new studies of both media and identity. Scholars of media studies, identity studies, cultural studies, minority studies, gender studies, race studies, and sociology will find this book particularly useful.

Reviews

Theresa Carilli and Jane Campbell have assembled a collection of essays that not only provides a sense of the vast scope of intersectional identities in media but also is the source of insights both expected and unexpected. Readers will find particularly delightful the chapter on Nonna Maria's Cantina Canadese, videos in which viewers learn about the conflation of gender, class, age, and national (and diasporic) identity from an Italian-Canadian puppet character. They will be captivated by the chapter on the shojo manga character Babysitter Gin, whose identities as a Japanese transgender woman ironically have made her a role model for cisgender Japanese women. The familiar texts of Hamilton: An American Musical and RuPaul's Drag Race receive fresh treatment, the former as a dramatization of intersectionality that creates a new identity for the marginalized, and the latter credited for its subversive cultural space, even despite its reproduction of racial tropes. The most unexpected takeaway from the anthology is the conclusion that intersectional identities may be the standard to which unidimensional ones are the exception.

--Bruce E. Drushel, Miami University

These highly thought-provoking, engaging, and informative essays, authored by a diverse group of scholars, provide a major contribution to the existing literature in media, culture, arts, race, ethnicity, and representations of marginalized communities. The editors deserve to be commended for bringing us these unique intercultural perspectives that should be of interest to the general reader, researchers, students, and scholars of media and cultural studies.

--Yahya R. Kamalipour, professor and interim chair, department of journalism & mass communication, North Carolina A&T State University

Author Bio

Jane Campbell is professor emerita of English at Purdue University Northwest.

Theresa Carilli is professor emerita of communication and creative arts at Purdue University Northwest.