Niya Pickett Miller – författare

Deconstructing the Albino Other: A Critique of Albinism Identity in Media discusses how American popular culture and communication about albinism, including movie characters and memes, have worked to create and maintain a negative trope of albinism that situates people with albinism (PWA) as a monolithic other. Niya Pickett Miller demonstrates that consequently, PWA must construct their own identities of albinism, highlighting the salient aspects of themselves as they see fit with no valid representation to look to for guidance. Thus, Pickett Miller argues, self-defining for PWA is a key rhetorical action taken to rearticulate albinism identity. Rather than focusing on scientific and medical lenses of analysis, this book positions albinism as a social construct through which a broader understanding of otherness can be achieved, using the negative influence of pop culture’s otherization of PWA as a case study with broader implications, including how medical conditions can be visually troped to isolate the other outside of society’s realm of normalcy. Scholars of media studies, race studies, sociology, rhetoric, and the medical humanities will find this book particularly useful.

Sustaining Black Music and Culture during COVID-19: #Verzuz and Club Quarantine argues that Instagram is a premier digital leisure space to celebrate and promote Black American culture and identity, particularly evidenced during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as the United States grappled with mandated shelter-in-place orders. Club Quarantine (CQ) and Verzuz emerged as highly successful Black music-listening events streamed on Instagram Live, collectively ushering Black (techno)culture through a once-in-a-generation pandemic and beyond. Contributors to this collection explore the communicative and cultural significance of these events as respite from social isolation and as a rearticulated space for Black cultural engagement in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased racial tensions in the United States.

Sustaining Black Music and Culture during COVID-19: #Verzuz and Club Quarantine argues that Instagram is a premier digital leisure space to celebrate and promote Black American culture and identity, particularly evidenced during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as the United States grappled with mandated shelter-in-place orders. Club Quarantine (CQ) and Verzuz emerged as highly successful Black music-listening events streamed on Instagram Live, collectively ushering Black (techno)culture through a once-in-a-generation pandemic and beyond. Contributors to this collection explore the communicative and cultural significance of these events as respite from social isolation and as a rearticulated space for Black cultural engagement in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased racial tensions in the United States.

Celebrated musician and entertainer Lizzo wowed audiences and left many “feeling good as hell.” Notwithstanding her collective—fat, Black female— identity she catapulted into mainstream success while redefining the social script for body size, race, and gender. This book explores a tale of two narratives: Lizzo’s self-curated, fat-positive identity and the media’s reaction to an unabashedly proud fat, Black woman. This critical analysis examines how Lizzo challenges fatphobia and reconstitutes fat stigmatization into self-empowerment through her strategic use of hyper-embodiment via social media, and the rhetorical distinctions between Lizzo’s self-curated narrative via social media and those offered about her in print media. In part, Lizzo’s bodily flaunting is argued as a significant rhetorical act that emancipates her identity of fatness and reframes the negative tropes of (fat) Black women typically curated in American culture.

Celebrated musician and entertainer Lizzo wowed audiences and left many “feeling good as hell.” Notwithstanding her collective—fat, Black female— identity she catapulted into mainstream success while redefining the social script for body size, race, and gender. This book explores a tale of two narratives: Lizzo’s self-curated, fat-positive identity and the media’s reaction to an unabashedly proud fat, Black woman. This critical analysis examines how Lizzo challenges fatphobia and reconstitutes fat stigmatization into self-empowerment through her strategic use of hyper-embodiment via social media, and the rhetorical distinctions between Lizzo’s self-curated narrative via social media and those offered about her in print media. In part, Lizzo’s bodily flaunting is argued as a significant rhetorical act that emancipates her identity of fatness and reframes the negative tropes of (fat) Black women typically curated in American culture.