Jamie A. Thomas
  • About
  • Portfolio
  • Teaching
    • AfroLatinx Podcast
    • [ZOMBIES REIMAGINED]
  • Blog
  • Connect With Me

#languagestory blog

Video & perspectives on communication, intercultural learning & the impact of anthropological research.

Zombies = Race, Gender, Politics, and Beyoncé

5/23/2016

0 Comments

 

Lemonade. 

So, on the last day of class this semester, I brought snacks to celebrate with my students. Some chocolate cake, spicy Doritos, and I always like a little bit of lemonade. I figure it couldn't hurt. I set it all on the table at the front of the room, along with a display of books we'd sampled in our syllabus, and some new ones I wanted to encourage students to pick up. 

When it came time to pass around the snacks, my students asked me if had brought the lemonade on purpose. "Uh, no, not really, I just like it." And they were surprised, because all they could think about was Beyoncé's new release. They asked if they could play the album while we circulated thank-you cards to write. "Sure, why not?" 
Alex and Eojin present their TimelineJS of *Engendering Zombie Fiction*, their segment of our exhibit now available online.
Alex and Eojin present their TimelineJS of *Engendering Zombie Fiction*, their segment of our exhibit now available online.
Picture
Samples from our course syllabus: From *The Walking Dead* to *European Thought in the Eighteenth Century*.
Samples from our course syllabus: From *The Walking Dead* to *European Thought in the Eighteenth Century*.
The single Hold Up begins playing across our projector screen, and I begin thinking about how themes in the song relate to key aspects of our seminar on Languages of Fear, Racism, and Zombies. This semester, we had spent time interrogating the reasons for our fears of writing, of others, and of being controlled by "The Man." So some of the words coming out of Beyoncé's mouth were not so far off from conversations we'd had throughout the semester about the concomitant role of discourse in controlling bodies and perpetuating fear of the Other. But my students were already aware of this. After all, two had incorporated discussion of Beyoncé into their final project as part of [ZOMBIES REIMAGINED], our collaborative digital exhibit. This blog post introduces our exhibit and explains how we pulled it all together.​

Read More
0 Comments

    Main Author

    Jamie A. Thomas is a linguistic anthropologist and digital media producer. Her forthcoming book Zombies Speak Swahili is all about the undead, videogames, and viral Black language. She teaches at Santa Monica College.

    Archives

    January 2022
    September 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014

    Categories

    All
    Afterlife
    Art
    Beginnings
    Bilingualism
    Body
    Borderlands
    Cinema
    Collaboration
    Colloquial Speech
    Colonialism
    Communication
    Communicative Competence
    Context
    Creation
    Cuba
    Cultural Exchange
    Digital Humanities
    Diversity
    Election 2016
    Emoji
    Engaged Research
    Gender
    Gentrification
    Hashtag
    Ideology
    Idioms
    Inclusion
    In-N-Out
    Intercultural Learning
    Interpersonal Communication
    Intersectionality
    Linguistic Inequality
    Local
    Mexico
    Modality
    Museums
    Participation
    Philadelphia
    Project Goals
    Public Ethnography
    Public Health
    Public Memory
    Race
    Saturday Night Live
    Semiotics
    Sexuality
    Sign Language
    Spanish
    Speech Community
    Stereotypes
    Storytelling
    Study Abroad
    Video
    Women
    Zombies

    RSS Feed

​Thank you for visiting! More project photos and video: https://linktr.ee/jamieisjames​