Fear of a Black Planet: Race, Media and Black Power

a talk by Professor Jane Rhodes

Tuesday, February 24, 2009
7 p.m.
Thompson Conference Center auditorium (TCC 1.110)
Free and open to the public

Barack Obama’s campaign brought into stark relief the continued importance of race in the powerful relationship between mass media and the nation’s social and political culture. That was seen clearly in Obama’s opponents’ strategy to highlight imagined and real links to 1960s activism -- his connections to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, former SDS leader Bill Ayers, and former Black Panther Bobby Rush, now a member of the U.S. Congress from Illinois. Rhodes’ talk will focus on black-power activism in the late 1960s and the strategic exchanges between social movements and media institutions in that era, paying attention to how these historical processes continue to shape contemporary political discourse. She will discuss how this influenced popular memories of the 1960s and of African American resistance.

Rhodes latest book is Framing the Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon (New Press, 2007). She is also the author of Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century (Indiana University Press, 1998) and was featured in the award-winning documentary “The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords.” Rhodes is Dean for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and Professor and Chair of American Studies at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. Prior to joining the Macalester faculty, Rhodes taught in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California-San Diego and the School of Journalism at Indiana University. Rhodes specializes in the study of race and mass media, the black press, media and social movements, and cultural studies.

This event is sponsored by the Senior Fellows honors program of the College of Communication and the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies. For more information, contact Robert Jensen at (512) 471-1990 or rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.