Learning With Mama and Media: Contemplating a Black Living Room Pedagogy With Black Women's Biopics

• In Event: Building Identities and Dismantling Discourses With/in Media

Abstract

Black popular culture has worked to complicate the Black narrative with historical counterstorytelling. Within the last two decades, the number of Black historical dramas and biographical pictures (biopics) has increased across a variety of media such as feature
films (Hidden Figures, 2016), made-for-television films (Crazy, Sexy, Cool, 2013), and limited docu-series on internet-based streaming services (Self Made: Inspired by the life of Madam CJ Walker, 2020). With more Black women’s stories featured in recent biopics, one must consider how a historized, racialized, and gendered story impacts the Black audience’s understanding of public memory. Using a Black feminist epistemology and sista circle methodology, this paper examines how Black mothers create a Black living room pedagogy to teach with/against Black women’s biopics.

Author

• Asha S. Winfield, Louisiana State University
  Presenting Author