Guest Lecture Richard King (Washington State University)
Stagings and Struggles in Contemporary Pop Culture
While an increasingly sophisticated literature has documented the ways in which individuals and institutions in mainstream society have imagined, appropriated and imitated indigenous cultures and peoples, it has largely neglected the manner in which American Indians have played Indian. This lecture explores some of the ways in which Native Americans have engaged, interpreted, and enacted Indianness. Specifically, through a close reading of examples from sport, hip hop, and video gaming, it traces stagings and struggles within, against, and beyond prevailing uses and understandings of indigeneity, outlining their significance for our understanding of racial play, cultural resistance, and social identity in Indian Country.
C. Richard King, Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University, has written extensively on the changing contours of race in post-Civil Rights America, the colonial legacies and postcolonial predicaments of American culture, and struggles over Indianness in public culture. His work has appeared a variety of journals, such as American Indian Culture and Research Journal, American Indian Quarterly, Journal of Sport and Social Issues, Public Historian, Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies, and Qualitative Inquiry. He is also the author/editor of several books, including Postcolonial America, Animating Difference: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Contemporary Films for Children, Beyond Hate: White Power and/as Popular Culture, and most recently, Redskins: Insult and Brand. Richard King is Fulbright Visiting Professor in Cultural Studies at the Department of American Studies in Summer Semester 2017.
The event is free and open to the public.
This lecture is organized by the Department of American Studies.
Department of American Studies Graz
Institut für Amerikanistik
Attemsgasse 25/II
A-8010 Graz
Tel. +43/316/380-2465
amerikanistik(at)uni-graz.at