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Start Date
25-6-2022 12:00 AM
End Date
25-6-2022 12:00 AM
Abstract
The year 2020 highlighted racial inequity through the Black Lives Matter Movement, an imbalance of domestic responsibilities and gendered labor as parents lost their access to childcare, and rampant sexual assault in Egypt, exposed via a feminist social media movement. This panel addresses three very different cases of reinvention in or through media that occured in and since the year 2020. Our first panelist examines the reconceptualization of racism by analyzing two comics-related texts. Our second presenter explores the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on reconceptualizing how parents view and interact with video games. Our final presenter analyzes the ways in which Egyptian women’s cyberactivism is forcing a reimagining of sexual harassment views in Egypt.
Re-Conceptualizing Racism and Redemption
Gabriel A. Cruz, PhD
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Within the broad social discourse related to the issue of racism, particularly since the murders of George Floyd, Brianna Taylor, and Ahmad Aubrey in 2020, conceptualizations of what a racist person looks like and how they behave have ranged from domestic terrorists clad in bullet proof armor to metropolitan police officers and white women in places of business harassing people of color. Alongside this conceptualization of how racism can manifest other important questions must be considered: what do we as a society do with racists? Do we rehabilitate or shun them? And whose responsibility is it to do this labor? This project considers these questions and how they are addressed within the very different yet poignant texts: Marvel’s “ The Falcon and The Winter Soldier” and " Bitter Root Vol.1 '' produced by Image comics. Specifically, this project engages in a comparative, intersectional analysis of the ideologies present within the respective narratives and how they conceptualize what it means to be a racist in the form of Captain John Walker (TFATWS) and the racist humans-turned-monsters, the Jinoo (Bitter Root). The project considers themes of rejection and redemption and concludes with considerations for productive messages within the texts.
How the COVID-19 pandemic reconceptualized parenting and play
Kristina Bell, PhD
High Point University
The COVID-19 pandemic with its lockdowns and stay-at-home orders caused more people to turn to gameplay as entertainment. Consumer spending on video games in the United States increased by 10 billion in 2020 (NPD Group Report, 2021). The pandemic also increased parental responsibilities; many parents lost child care and were working from home while simultaneously caring for their children. This presentation explores how the COVID-19 pandemic affected parents and their relationship to video games. I include analysis of interviews from gamer parents who I interviewed twice; first in 2017 and then in 2021. I discuss how the pandemic changed their preferences and attitudes about gaming, and the various internal and external pressures that affected their ability to game. This research applies Sharma’s (2014) theory of power-chronography to explore the participants’ entangled relationship between labor and time. It is also informed by the work of cyberfeminist understandings of technology (Cockburn, 1992; Wajcman, 2009), which explores who has access to technology and the various gatekeepers that limit/permit technological use and mastery.
Reimagining how sexual harassment is perceived in Egypt with women’s amplified cyberactivism
Nahed Eltantawy, PhD.
High Point University
For decades, Egypt has remained one of the main MENA countries, where gender-based violence has plagued the country as a social and legal problem (Sadek 2016). According to a 2015 study, 7.8 million Egyptian women are annual victims of all forms of violence by a male partner, relative or strangers in public places (UNFPA website). A UN 2013 study found that over 99.3 percent of all Egyptian females surveyed admitted to experiencing some form of sexual harassment in their lifetime (El Deeb 2013). Yet, Egyptian women’s active participation in the Arab uprisings of 2011, has encouraged many women, who once accepted such assault and abuse with shame and self-blame, to find their voice and face to their abusers (Eltantawy 2017; Ibrahim 2019). Today, a growing number of feminist activists rely on social media to fight gender-based violence. In this study, I conduct a discourse analysis of the social media accounts of Egyptian feminist activist group, Assault Police, between July 1st - December 1st, 2020. Assault Police was created in July 2020 to expose the sexual assault crimes of 21-year-old Egyptian, Ahmed Bassam Zaki. Assault Police has since then exposed other cases of violence against Egyptian women, leading to widespread national and international media attention, and encouraging many victims to share their stories. The study will analyze social media discourses relating to Assault Police, in order to get a deeper understanding of Egyptian women’s cyberactivism and how it is forcing a reconceptualization of sexual harassment views in Egypt.
Reconceptualizing race, sexual assault, and parenting through media.
The year 2020 highlighted racial inequity through the Black Lives Matter Movement, an imbalance of domestic responsibilities and gendered labor as parents lost their access to childcare, and rampant sexual assault in Egypt, exposed via a feminist social media movement. This panel addresses three very different cases of reinvention in or through media that occured in and since the year 2020. Our first panelist examines the reconceptualization of racism by analyzing two comics-related texts. Our second presenter explores the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on reconceptualizing how parents view and interact with video games. Our final presenter analyzes the ways in which Egyptian women’s cyberactivism is forcing a reimagining of sexual harassment views in Egypt.
Re-Conceptualizing Racism and Redemption
Gabriel A. Cruz, PhD
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Within the broad social discourse related to the issue of racism, particularly since the murders of George Floyd, Brianna Taylor, and Ahmad Aubrey in 2020, conceptualizations of what a racist person looks like and how they behave have ranged from domestic terrorists clad in bullet proof armor to metropolitan police officers and white women in places of business harassing people of color. Alongside this conceptualization of how racism can manifest other important questions must be considered: what do we as a society do with racists? Do we rehabilitate or shun them? And whose responsibility is it to do this labor? This project considers these questions and how they are addressed within the very different yet poignant texts: Marvel’s “ The Falcon and The Winter Soldier” and " Bitter Root Vol.1 '' produced by Image comics. Specifically, this project engages in a comparative, intersectional analysis of the ideologies present within the respective narratives and how they conceptualize what it means to be a racist in the form of Captain John Walker (TFATWS) and the racist humans-turned-monsters, the Jinoo (Bitter Root). The project considers themes of rejection and redemption and concludes with considerations for productive messages within the texts.
How the COVID-19 pandemic reconceptualized parenting and play
Kristina Bell, PhD
High Point University
The COVID-19 pandemic with its lockdowns and stay-at-home orders caused more people to turn to gameplay as entertainment. Consumer spending on video games in the United States increased by 10 billion in 2020 (NPD Group Report, 2021). The pandemic also increased parental responsibilities; many parents lost child care and were working from home while simultaneously caring for their children. This presentation explores how the COVID-19 pandemic affected parents and their relationship to video games. I include analysis of interviews from gamer parents who I interviewed twice; first in 2017 and then in 2021. I discuss how the pandemic changed their preferences and attitudes about gaming, and the various internal and external pressures that affected their ability to game. This research applies Sharma’s (2014) theory of power-chronography to explore the participants’ entangled relationship between labor and time. It is also informed by the work of cyberfeminist understandings of technology (Cockburn, 1992; Wajcman, 2009), which explores who has access to technology and the various gatekeepers that limit/permit technological use and mastery.
Reimagining how sexual harassment is perceived in Egypt with women’s amplified cyberactivism
Nahed Eltantawy, PhD.
High Point University
For decades, Egypt has remained one of the main MENA countries, where gender-based violence has plagued the country as a social and legal problem (Sadek 2016). According to a 2015 study, 7.8 million Egyptian women are annual victims of all forms of violence by a male partner, relative or strangers in public places (UNFPA website). A UN 2013 study found that over 99.3 percent of all Egyptian females surveyed admitted to experiencing some form of sexual harassment in their lifetime (El Deeb 2013). Yet, Egyptian women’s active participation in the Arab uprisings of 2011, has encouraged many women, who once accepted such assault and abuse with shame and self-blame, to find their voice and face to their abusers (Eltantawy 2017; Ibrahim 2019). Today, a growing number of feminist activists rely on social media to fight gender-based violence. In this study, I conduct a discourse analysis of the social media accounts of Egyptian feminist activist group, Assault Police, between July 1st - December 1st, 2020. Assault Police was created in July 2020 to expose the sexual assault crimes of 21-year-old Egyptian, Ahmed Bassam Zaki. Assault Police has since then exposed other cases of violence against Egyptian women, leading to widespread national and international media attention, and encouraging many victims to share their stories. The study will analyze social media discourses relating to Assault Police, in order to get a deeper understanding of Egyptian women’s cyberactivism and how it is forcing a reconceptualization of sexual harassment views in Egypt.
Bio
Kristina Bell is an Assistant Professor of Game Design in the Nido R. Qubein School of Communication at High Point University, where she teaches classes about identity and games, game design, and narrative design. Her Ph.D. is from North Carolina State University in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media. She specializes in ethnographic and qualitative methods and her work focuses on the intersections of identity and video games. Her work has been published in Critical Studies in Media Communication, Game Studies, Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, and Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology
Gabriel A. Cruz (Ph.D., Bowling Green State University) is a Lecturer in the Communication Studies Department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His research interests include intersectional critical race analysis of popular culture as well as White Nationalist rhetoric. His work has appeared in the academic periodicals Journal of Alternative and Community Media and Howard Journal of Communications; and the book Deadpool and Afrofuturism in Black Panther: Gender, Identity, and the Re-Making of Blackness.
Nahed Eltantawy is an Associate Professor of Journalism and Associate Dean in the Nido R. Qubein School of Communication at High Point University. Eltantawy graduated from Georgia State University with a PhD in Public Communication in December 2007. Eltantawy teaches a variety of convergent journalism and women’s and gender studies courses. Eltantawy grew up in Cairo, Egypt, where she worked as a Reuters correspondent for over three years before moving to the US. Her research interests include media representation, gender issues, social media activism, Middle East media and critical and cultural studies. Eltantawy is a former Fulrbight scholar and has presented her work at the National Communication Association conventions, the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication, regional US conventions as well as conventions in the Middle East & Asia. Her work has been published in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Feminist Media Studies and the International Journal of Communication.