Dr. Jennifer Richardson, gender and women’s studies, holds Beyoncé community classroom event on Thursday, March 31
Olga Bonfiglio
College of Arts and Sciences Staff Writer
It worked well in Chicago—and it can work well here in Kalamazoo, contends Dr. Jennifer Richardson, assistant professor of gender and women’s studies.
Richardson and her students from gender and women’s studies will go beyond their usual classroom and engage the community in a discussion about Beyoncé, Black feminism and the politics of Black womanhood.
The “community classroom” event is part of the students’ course requirement for “Beyoncé: Critical Race Feminist Perspectives and the Politics of US Black Womanhood.”
“Community classroom” opens the class to the public. Students at the University of Illinois-Chicago heartily welcomed the “classroom” and the subject of Beyoncé last year when Richardson taught it there.
“Beyoncé is a powerful figure with a tremendous multicultural and multigenerational fan base impacting the lives of millions of people,” said Richardson. “As my research delves into how African American women negotiate and navigate media representations of beauty and representations of Black women, Beyoncé’s name was the one that came up for every single woman in my study.”
Richardson’s class analyzes the intersections of identity, race, gender, class and sexuality in contemporary representations of Black women in media and popular cultures, particularly media figures and celebrities like Beyoncé.
“There is depth and complexity within Beyoncé’s persona that we rarely get to see of Black women in popular mediated spaces,” she said.
Meanwhile, Richardson claims that while many young people and celebrities today run away from the “feminist” label, Beyoncé claims it as a political stance demanding that her viewers at least investigate what she has to say as a celebrity, sex symbol, success story, mother, wife, and African American woman of wealth.
“It’s important to study someone as powerful as Beyoncé,” said Richardson. “We saw evidence of that power at the 50th Superbowl, especially since so many people were talking about her performance afterward.”
Students in Richardson’s class are challenged to use critical race feminist theoretical frameworks as tools to analyze and make meaning of Beyoncé, her persona and the impact she has on society so that they can ask questions about the current moment feminists find themselves in today.
“Beyoncé is a polarizing figure within feminist debate, and now within political, racial, and public debates,” said Richardson. “There is no one consensus about whether or not she is a feminist or represents a feminist agenda. If she is a politicized figure, what does that mean? We also need to ask what impact she has on women, women of color in general and Black women in particular as a way of seeing themselves and the world around them?”
The community classroom is free and open to the public on Thursday, March 31 from 6 to 8 p.m. in 1920 Sangren Hall.