Being Mara Brock Akil: Representations of Black Womanhood on Television examines the body of work of Mara Brock Akil, the showrunner who produced Girlfriends, The Game, Being Mary Jane, and Love Is__. The contributions to this volume are theoretically anchored in Patricia Hill Collin’s Black Feminist Thought, with a focus on how Brock Akil’s shows intentionally address Black humanity and specifically provide context for Black women’s lived experiences and empathy for Black womanhood by featuring woman-centered characters with flaws, strength, and complexity. Shauntae Brown White and Kandace L. Harris have compiled a volume that analyzes themes that define Black womanhood and examines audience reception of and social media interaction with Brock Akil’s work.

In 1920 W.E.B. Du Bois cited the damnation of women as linked to the devaluation of motherhood. This dilemma, he argues, had a crushing blow on Black women as they were forced into slavery. Black womanhood, portrayed as hypersexual by nature, became an enduring stereotype which did not coincide with the dignity of mother and wife. This portrayal continues to reinforce negative stereotypes of Black women in the media today. This book highlights how Black women have been negatively portrayed in the media, focusing on the export nature of media and its ability to convey notions of Blackness to the public. It argues that media such as rap music videos, television dramas, reality television shows, and newscasts create and affect expectations of Black women. Exploring the role that racism, misogyny and media play in the representation of Black womanhood, it provides a foundation for challenging contemporary media’s portrayal of Black women.

This book critically analyzes the portrayals of Black women in current reality television. Audiences are presented with a multitude of images of Black women fighting, arguing, and cursing at one another in this manufactured world of reality television. This perpetuation of negative, insidious racial and gender stereotypes influences how the U.S. views Black women. This stereotyping disrupts the process in which people are able to appreciate cultural and gender difference. Instead of celebrating the diverse symbols and meaning making that accompanies Black women's discourse and identities, reality television scripts an artificial or plastic image of Black women that reinforces extant stereotypes. This collection's contributors seek to uncover examples in reality television shows where instantiations of Black women's gendered, racial, and cultural difference is signified and made sinister.

With the emergence of popular culture phenomena such as reality television, blogging, and social networking sites, it is important to examine the representation of Black women and the potential implications of those images, messages, and roles. Black Women and Popular Culture: The Conversation Continues provides such a comprehensive analysis. Using an array of theoretical frameworks and methodologies, this collection features cutting edge research from scholars interested in the relationship among media, society, perceptions, and Black women. The uniqueness of this book is that it serves as a compilation of “hot topics” including ABC’s Scandal, Beyoncé’s Visual Album, and Oprah’s Instagram page. Other themes have roots in reality television, film, and hip hop, as well as issues of gender politics, domestic violence, and colorism. The discussion also extends to the presentation and inclusion of Black women in advertising, print, and digital media.

From The Real Housewives of Atlanta to Flavor of Love, reality shows with predominantly black casts have often been criticized for their negative representation of African American women as loud, angry, and violent. Yet even as these programs appear to be rehashing old stereotypes of black women, the critiques of them are arguably problematic in their own way, as the notion of “respectability” has historically been used to police black women’s behaviors. The first book of scholarship devoted to the issue of how black women are depicted on reality television, Real Sister offers an even-handed consideration of the genre. The book’s ten contributors—black female scholars from a variety of disciplines—provide a wide range of perspectives, while considering everything from Basketball Wives to Say Yes to the Dress. As regular viewers of reality television, these scholars are able to note ways in which the genre presents positive images of black womanhood, even as they catalog a litany of stereotypes about race, class, and gender that it tends to reinforce. Rather than simply dismissing reality television as “trash,” this collection takes the genre seriously, as an important touchstone in ongoing cultural debates about what constitutes “trashiness” and “respectability.” Written in an accessible style that will appeal to reality TV fans both inside and outside of academia, Real Sister thus seeks to inspire a more nuanced, thoughtful conversation about the genre’s representations and their effects on the black community.

"Challenging Misrepresentations of Black Womanhood" investigates the typecasting of Black womanhood and the larger sociological impact on Black women’s self-perceptions. It details the historical and contemporary use of stereotypes against Black women and how these women work to challenge and dispel false perceptions. The book highlights the role of racist ideas in the reproduction and promotion of stereotypes of Black femaleness in media, literature, artificial intelligence and the perceptions of the general public. Contributors in this collection identify the racist and sexist ideologies behind the misperceptions of Black womanhood and illuminate twenty-first–century stereotypical treatment of Black women such as Michelle Obama and Serena Williams, and explore topics such as comedic expressions of Black motherhood, representations of Black women in television dramas and literature, and identity reclamation and self-determination. "Challenging Misrepresentations of Black Womanhood" establishes the criteria with which to examine the role of stereotypes in the lives of Black women and, more specifically, its impact on their social and psychological well-being.

In The Lived Experience of African American Women Mentors: Community Pedagogues, Wyletta Gamble-Lomax explores the lived experiences of six African American female mentors working with African American female youth. The works of philosophers Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Edward Casey are intertwined with the writings of Black feminist scholars such as Patricia Hill Collins and Audre Lorde, while Max van Manen guides the phenomenological process with pedagogical insights and reminders. Through individual conversations with each muse, the power in care and the importance of listening in mentoring relationships is uncovered as essential components. The significance of place, the complexities of Black femininity, and the benefits of genuine dialogue are all explored in ways that bring new understanding to African American female experiences and how they connect to today’s educational climate. This study concludes with phenomenological recommendations for educational stakeholders to pursue partnerships with school, family and community.

Based on interviews and archival research, this book explores how media is implicated in Black women’s lives in Britain. From accounts of twentieth-century activism and television representations, to experiences of YouTube and Twitter, Sobande's analysis traverses tensions between digital culture’s communal, counter-cultural and commercial qualities. Chapters 2 and 4 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This timely collection brings feminist critique to bear on contemporary postfeminist mass media culture, analyzing phenomena ranging from action films featuring violent heroines to the “girling” of aging women in productions such as the movie Something’s Gotta Give and the British television series 10 Years Younger. Broadly defined, “postfeminism” encompasses a set of assumptions that feminism has accomplished its goals and is now a thing of the past. It presumes that women are unsatisfied with their (taken for granted) legal and social equality and can find fulfillment only through practices of transformation and empowerment. Postfeminism is defined by class, age, and racial exclusions; it is youth-obsessed and white and middle-class by default. Anchored in consumption as a strategy and leisure as a site for the production of the self, postfeminist mass media assumes that the pleasures and lifestyles with which it is associated are somehow universally shared and, perhaps more significantly, universally accessible. Essays by feminist film, media, and literature scholars based in the United States and United Kingdom provide an array of perspectives on the social and political implications of postfeminism. Examining magazines, mainstream and independent cinema, popular music, and broadcast genres from primetime drama to reality television, contributors consider how postfeminism informs self-fashioning through makeovers and cosmetic surgery, the “metrosexual” male, the “black chick flick,” and more. Interrogating Postfeminism demonstrates not only the viability of, but also the necessity for, a powerful feminist critique of contemporary popular culture. Contributors. Sarah Banet-Weiser, Steven Cohan, Lisa Coulthard, Anna Feigenbaum, Suzanne Leonard, Angela McRobbie, Diane Negra, Sarah Projansky, Martin Roberts, Hannah E. Sanders, Kimberly Springer, Yvonne Tasker, Sadie Wearing

Black women's work in television has been, since the beginning, a negotiation. Black Women and the Changing Television Landscape explores the steps black women, as actors, directors, and producers, have taken to improve representations of black people on the small screen. Beginning with The Beulah Show, Anderson articulates the interrelationship between US culture and the televisual, demonstrating the conditions under which black women particularly, and black people generally, exist in popular culture.