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Lemonade (2016) is a genre-blending text that imports cultural and fantastical devices in order to revise, interrogate, and re-examine history–specifically, the traumas inherited from enslavement. In its analysis of history, Lemonade immortalizes Afrodiasporic spiritual practices and enshrines Black women-healers and magic-users as folk heroes. This work advances that the Afrodiasporic spiritual practices and gynocentric connections are used to form Black female collectives. It draws largely on Black and Africana feminist and womanist scholarship to frame an expanded discussion of spirituality and Black motherhood in the American South, and to demonstrate how collectives–sacred, transhistorical communities–are critical to Black female healing. It contextualizes Lemonade’s “chapters,” visuals, and wider narrative, and it examines the Southern psychic and epistemological resources that Beyoncé, as protagonist, consults. In doing so, this work ultimately intends to create new intellectual space for readers to revisit questions of collectivity in Lemonade and consider the indispensability of community for Black women and girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surviving R. Kelly (Part I) (SRK) was intended to amplify the voices of tens of Black and Latino women who have faced sexualized violence at the hands of singer Robert Kelly. The creators hoped to highlight the fact that these women's testimonies had been deemed untrustworthy by the American legal system, and accosted within mainstream American media. Given that a lack of mainstream outrage regarding the violent experiences of Black women is neither new nor isolated to those victimized by Kelly, and considering that SRK documents the stories of visibly Black women, the docuseries constitutes a potential space for resistance to the harms perpetrated against Black girls and women overall. Thus, I will use a feminist critical theoretical lens to examine the extent to which SRK disrupts the imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchal paradigm within which Black girls' and women's accounts of sexualized violence are systematically denied credibility and/or attention. I argue that, while SRK begins to critique the harmful social norms that hinder the testimonies of Black victims/survivors from being both heard and believed, the docuseries falls short of holding responsible both the people and the systems complicit in the marginalization of Black female victims/survivors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an in-depth discussion between us (six Black PhD and early career researchers), this work explores burgeoning Black feminist and digital media studies in Britain. Our article is rooted in dialogue about Black feminist digital culture, communications, aesthetics, joy, and our different yet interconnected scholarly experiences. We consider who and what shapes the work that we do, the way we approach it, and how it has developed in recent years. Specifically, our thoughts relate to five expansive and interlinked themes: 1. Digital Blackness, Twitter, and Community-Building, 2. Aesthetics, Archives, and Knowledge Production, 3. Pressures, Projections, and Power Dynamics, 4. Research on/as Black Feminist Joy and Pleasure, 5. The Politics of Research. By reflecting on our research and encounters in academia we provide an overview of key aspects of Black feminist and digital media studies in Britain, including how such scholarship is impacted by the specifics of where we are (and have been) located. In doing so, we share insights at the nexus of Black studies, digital studies, cultural studies, and feminist media studies that foreground possibilities, problems, playfulness, and pleasure that can be part of doing Black feminist and digital media studies work in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narratives of violence against Black women are not prioritized in the mainstream news but Black feminists amplify them on social media. This commentary revisits a commentary I wrote "Digital Defense: Black Feminists Resist Violence With Hashtag Activism" for this journal to acknowledge the ways in which Black feminists use social media to amplify stories of violence against Black women and organize and advocate for justice for them in the absence of mainstream media coverage. This commentary revisits that essay and the advancements of Black digital feminism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is a textual analysis of newspaper articles from The Clarion-Ledger, a daily mainstream newspaper, and The Jackson Advocate, a Black weekly newspaper, both based in Jackson, Mississippi. This analysis reveals that mainstream and ethnic media both covered essential elements of efforts to get Gladys and Jamie Scott released from prison for serving a life sentence for robbery. Articles published in 2010, a year before the Black women who are sisters were released, show that both newspapers took a different tone in their coverage, with the mainstream newspaper producing sporadic neutral coverage of the case. The Black press consistently published stories about the grassroots movement to release the Scott sisters working in its tradition to advocate for Black liberation. The researcher analyzed the data with Black feminist theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black women and Black feminist scholars have always pointed out the hypocrisy of advocating for civil rights and freedoms that do not extend to them. However, with the rise of digital culture and tools as the primary space and mechanism whereby Black feminists crafted arguments, a new urgency has emerged within Black feminist writing online, advocating for a dialectic of self and community interests. Black feminist writers have created a new rhetorical principle central to the #BlackLiveMatter movement, which began in the blogosphere with longform writing and enclaved communities. Before the hashtag or activism on Twitter or Instagram, the blogosphere provided a space for Black women to craft new arguments that centralized Black cis and trans women in the fight for justice. Black feminist writers insist that caring for themselves is integral to Black feminist praxis and social justice. Retracing this work from the blogosphere to social media reminds us of the importance of centralizing Black women in our discussion of digital culture and activism and the lessons this may provide in crafting a more just future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of popular culture depictions of Black Lives Matter (BLM) yields questions about media and marketing professionals' (mis)use of representations and rhetoric associated with social justice movements, and, more precisely, Black activism. This commentary is titled "Screening Black Lives Matter" in an attempt to: 1) reflect on how BLM has been re-mediated and re-presented on screen in mainstream media and popular culture, and 2) consider who and what is typically excluded ("screened out") from such images, narratives, and media production processes. Make no mistake about it, inclusion in anti-Black institutions, including media organizations and industry discourse, is far from being a liberationist goal. However, reflecting on who and what is foregrounded in on-screen depictions and discourses related to BLM in TV and film can contribute to important understandings of how Black social justice organizing is typically framed in contemporary mainstream media in ways that distort the reality of activism, such as by sidelining the work of Black LGBTQ+ people and diminishing or denying the radical politics at the core of such collective and transformative efforts. What does all of this suggest about the relationship between media, marketing, and Black activism? This commentary considers such issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fight for Justice for Breonna Taylor continues as she haunts national, local, and academic imaginaries, reminding us that gendered Black death and exclusion is still a critical component of Democracy. What is it about Taylor, the conditions of her life and her death, that allow her to haunt the nation's imaginary? How is it that her face—as her body is purposefully excluded from most renderings—can be painted on billboards, buildings, murals, on signs at protests, but Justice for her and her family cannot be achieved? This essay explores the complex relationship between Black gendered life, state-sanctioned death, and remembrance to ask how we might liberate Black women and girls in life and in memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Danielle "StrugglingToBeHeard" Cole is a Black nonbinary femme who was launched from the relative safety of their Tumblr famous social justice online community into infamy via a viral video reposted to the notoriously unjust, WorldStarHipHop gossip blog. In this excerpt from my book, Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women's Digital Resistance (NYU Press May 2021), I asked Cole about her vision for a social media platform built on Black feminist principles. What would it look and feel like when #BlackLivesMatter was a central tenet of the platform, with queer, trans, nonbinary, agender and gender variant Black folks to the front? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]