Presented By: Digital Studies Institute
DISCO Network Presents - From Community Center to Content Farm: New Modes of Digitality for Black Women and Girls
Aria Halliday, Nessa Keddo, Ashleigh Greene Wade, and Rianna Walcott in conversation with Catherine Knight Steele
Event description coming soon.
This event is open to the public, and we encourage all interested faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students to attend.
Refreshments will be provided to the first 100 attendees.
A corresponding networking opportunity with the panelists will be available for undergraduate and graduate students. Interested students may register for this session using the same form as the main event. More information coming soon.
Advance registration is recommended:
Register to attend in-person: https://sessions.studentlife.umich.edu/track/event/session/111880
Register to attend on Zoom: https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_jmr7uP-iSuyjO0RgeRTl1Q
Meet the Panelists:
Dr. Aria S. Halliday is an award-winning author who specializes in the study of cultural constructions of black girlhood and womanhood in material, visual, and digital culture in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Her research is published in venues such as The Black Scholar, Cultural Studies, Feminist Theory, Girlhood Studies, and Women, Gender, and Families of Color. She is the author of Black Girls and How We Fail Them (UNC Press, 2025) and Buy Black: How Black Women Transformed US Pop Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2022). She edited and introduced The Black Girlhood Studies Collection (Women’s Press, 2019). She was an Institute for Citizens and Scholars Career Enhancement Fellow (2020-2021), a Donald D. Harrington Faculty Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin (2022-2023), and the 2021 Stuart Hall Foundation x Cultural Studies Award winner for her article “Twerk Sumn!: Theorizing Black Girl Epistemology in the Body.” Currently, she is the Marie Rich Endowed Professor in Arts and Sciences and Associate Professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies and program in African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. She’s working on two books, A Black Feminist Guide to Automobility, and In a 90s Kind of World: Black Girls and Women in Popular Culture. She is also the owner and founder of Plume & Prosper, a wellness retreat experience.
Nessa Keddo is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Media, Diversity and Technology at King’s College London. She is Programme Director for MA Global Media Industries and the Department’s EDI Lead. Nessa’s research explores the intersection of diversity practices and technological deployment in the media industries. More recently with the onset of automated praxis through generative AI, her work explores the affordances and challenges of digitised and platform labour, particularly for marginalised practitioners and independent creators. Nessa’s research is grounded in critical approaches to the embedding of diversity practices in the media industries. She is co-author of the upcoming book Race, Racism and Diversity in the Cultural and Creative Industries (2025), which focuses on the business case for diversity, specifically since the commercialisation of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.
Ashleigh Greene Wade is Associate Professor of Digital Studies, jointly appointed in Media Studies and African American Studies. Broadly speaking, her work traverses the fields of Black girlhood studies, digital and visual media studies, Black Feminist theory, and digital humanities. Wade has a Ph.D. in Women’s and Gender Studies from Rutgers University and is an alumna of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies Fellowship Program. Her work on digital Blackness appears in The Black Scholar, National Political Science Review, Women, Gender, and Families of Color, Visual Arts Research, and Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies. Wade’s forthcoming monograph, Black Girl Autopoetics: Agency and Possibility in Everyday Digital Practice (Duke University Press), explores the role of Black girls’ digital practices in documenting and preserving everyday Black life.
Dr. Rianna Walcott is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland, and Associate Director of the Black Communication and Technology (BCaT) Lab as part of the DISCO Network. An alumna of the London Arts and Humanities Partnership (LAHP), Dr. Walcott earned her PhD in Digital Humanities at King's College London for her research on Black (and specifically Black British) communication practices and digital media, locating the evolution of a hybrid ‘Black British’ identity within the wider Black diaspora. She combines digital research, Black feminist praxis, decolonial studies, arts and culture, and mental health advocacy in her work. In the time left over, she moonlights as a jazz singer.
Meet the Moderator
Catherine Knight Steele is an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland - College Park where she directs the Black Communication and Technology lab (BCaT) as a part of the Digital Inquiry, Speculation, Collaboration, & Optimism (DISCO) Network funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She is a 2024-26 Just Tech Fellow. Her research focuses on race, gender, and media, with a specific emphasis on Black culture and discourse and digital communication. She examines representations of marginalized communities in the media and how groups resist oppression and practice joy using online technology to create spaces of community.
We want to make our events accessible to all participants. CART captioning services will be provided. If you anticipate needing additional accommodations to participate, please email Cherice Chan at [email protected].
This event is open to the public, and we encourage all interested faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students to attend.
Refreshments will be provided to the first 100 attendees.
A corresponding networking opportunity with the panelists will be available for undergraduate and graduate students. Interested students may register for this session using the same form as the main event. More information coming soon.
Advance registration is recommended:
Register to attend in-person: https://sessions.studentlife.umich.edu/track/event/session/111880
Register to attend on Zoom: https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_jmr7uP-iSuyjO0RgeRTl1Q
Meet the Panelists:
Dr. Aria S. Halliday is an award-winning author who specializes in the study of cultural constructions of black girlhood and womanhood in material, visual, and digital culture in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Her research is published in venues such as The Black Scholar, Cultural Studies, Feminist Theory, Girlhood Studies, and Women, Gender, and Families of Color. She is the author of Black Girls and How We Fail Them (UNC Press, 2025) and Buy Black: How Black Women Transformed US Pop Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2022). She edited and introduced The Black Girlhood Studies Collection (Women’s Press, 2019). She was an Institute for Citizens and Scholars Career Enhancement Fellow (2020-2021), a Donald D. Harrington Faculty Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin (2022-2023), and the 2021 Stuart Hall Foundation x Cultural Studies Award winner for her article “Twerk Sumn!: Theorizing Black Girl Epistemology in the Body.” Currently, she is the Marie Rich Endowed Professor in Arts and Sciences and Associate Professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies and program in African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. She’s working on two books, A Black Feminist Guide to Automobility, and In a 90s Kind of World: Black Girls and Women in Popular Culture. She is also the owner and founder of Plume & Prosper, a wellness retreat experience.
Nessa Keddo is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Media, Diversity and Technology at King’s College London. She is Programme Director for MA Global Media Industries and the Department’s EDI Lead. Nessa’s research explores the intersection of diversity practices and technological deployment in the media industries. More recently with the onset of automated praxis through generative AI, her work explores the affordances and challenges of digitised and platform labour, particularly for marginalised practitioners and independent creators. Nessa’s research is grounded in critical approaches to the embedding of diversity practices in the media industries. She is co-author of the upcoming book Race, Racism and Diversity in the Cultural and Creative Industries (2025), which focuses on the business case for diversity, specifically since the commercialisation of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.
Ashleigh Greene Wade is Associate Professor of Digital Studies, jointly appointed in Media Studies and African American Studies. Broadly speaking, her work traverses the fields of Black girlhood studies, digital and visual media studies, Black Feminist theory, and digital humanities. Wade has a Ph.D. in Women’s and Gender Studies from Rutgers University and is an alumna of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies Fellowship Program. Her work on digital Blackness appears in The Black Scholar, National Political Science Review, Women, Gender, and Families of Color, Visual Arts Research, and Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies. Wade’s forthcoming monograph, Black Girl Autopoetics: Agency and Possibility in Everyday Digital Practice (Duke University Press), explores the role of Black girls’ digital practices in documenting and preserving everyday Black life.
Dr. Rianna Walcott is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland, and Associate Director of the Black Communication and Technology (BCaT) Lab as part of the DISCO Network. An alumna of the London Arts and Humanities Partnership (LAHP), Dr. Walcott earned her PhD in Digital Humanities at King's College London for her research on Black (and specifically Black British) communication practices and digital media, locating the evolution of a hybrid ‘Black British’ identity within the wider Black diaspora. She combines digital research, Black feminist praxis, decolonial studies, arts and culture, and mental health advocacy in her work. In the time left over, she moonlights as a jazz singer.
Meet the Moderator
Catherine Knight Steele is an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland - College Park where she directs the Black Communication and Technology lab (BCaT) as a part of the Digital Inquiry, Speculation, Collaboration, & Optimism (DISCO) Network funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She is a 2024-26 Just Tech Fellow. Her research focuses on race, gender, and media, with a specific emphasis on Black culture and discourse and digital communication. She examines representations of marginalized communities in the media and how groups resist oppression and practice joy using online technology to create spaces of community.
We want to make our events accessible to all participants. CART captioning services will be provided. If you anticipate needing additional accommodations to participate, please email Cherice Chan at [email protected].
Related Links
Explore Similar Events
-
Loading Similar Events...
