Season 01, Episode 06: The Memeification of Black women
The BLK IRL Podcast is an audio docuseries that explores the business of “influencing” and the power dynamics at play in the act of cultural exchange. Join host Anuli Akanegbu as she dissects themes related to race in the influencer economy through research-supported commentary and intimate interviews with predominantly Black content creators, scholars, entrepreneurs, activists, marketing experts, and cultural critics.
In this episode, Anuli talks to Dr. Aria S. Halliday, Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and African-American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky about the memeification and commodification of Black women and girls on social media as well as representations of Black women and girls on television.
FEATURED SPEAKER: dr. aria halliday
Aria S. Halliday, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies and program in African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Halliday specializes in cultural constructions of black girlhood and womanhood in material, visual, and digital culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. Her interdisciplinary interests include in sexuality, Black feminism, and radicalism in Black popular culture in the United States and the Caribbean. She is the editor of The Black Girlhood Studies Collection (Women’s Press, 2019) and co-editor of a special issue on hip-hop feminism in Journal of Hip Hop Studies (2020).
Referenced Materials
Butler, Danielle. (2020). “Breonna, Oluwatoyin, & Posthumous Iconography of Murdered Black People.” Hood Communist. http://hoodcommunist.org/2020/09/03/on-breonna-oluwatoyin-posthumous-iconography-of-murdered-black-people/
Cite Black Women Collective. https://www.citeblackwomencollective.org/
Halliday, Aria. (2019). “Afrofutures of Feminism: Young, Gifted, and Black.” Kaltura. https://www.kaltura.com/index.php/extwidget/preview/partner_id/266312/uiconf_id/43159421/entry_id/1_qdioi03w/embed/dynamic?
Halliday, Aria. (2018). “Miley, What’s Good?: Nicki Minaj’s Anaconda, Instagram Reproductions, and Viral Memetic Violence.” Girlhood Studies 11(3):67-83. https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/girlhood-studies/11/3/ghs110307.xml?ArticleBodyColorStyles=pdf-3139
Halliday, Aria S. and Payne, Ashley N. (2020) "Twenty-First Century B.I.T.C.H. Frameworks: Hip Hop Feminism Comes of Age," Journal of Hip Hop Studies: Vol. 7 : Iss. 1 , Article 1. https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/jhhs/vol7/iss1/1