The UBC Department of English Language & Literatures is pleased to invite you to the 2023 Dorothy Black Lecture featuring Dr. Eve Ng, Associate Director of Graduate Studies in the School of Media Arts and Associate Professor of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Ohio University.
This lecture can be attended online via Zoom. Please be sure to register using the link below.
About the Lecture Series
Committed to education throughout her life, Dorothy L. Black earned her BA from UBC in 1952 and taught in Burnaby schools for over 40 years. A bequest from Ms. Black established the Dorothy L. Black First Year English Speakers’ Series Endowment after her passing.
Talk Abstract
This presentation draws on Eve Ng’s book Cancel Culture: A Critical Analysis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), taking a media and cultural studies perspective on the phenomenon now known as “cancel culture.”
Cancel practices (acts of “cancelling”) and cancel discourses (what people say about cancelling) are both central, and have lineages from Black communicative practices, celebrity and fan cultures, consumer culture, and political discourse. Discussing key examples for both cancelling and commentary about cancelling, this talk traces the genealogies and multiple strands of criticisms about “cancel culture.” And, in examining cancelling in both the U.S. and China, the analysis underscores the importance of accounting for how cancelling is differentially shaped by specific national contexts. “Cancel culture,” in its myriad manifestations, provides a productive domain to theorize contestations of cultural and political power.
About the Speaker
Eve Ng (she/her/hers) is an Associate Professor and the Graduate Director in the School of Media Arts and Studies, and a core faculty member in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Ohio University. She completed a Ph.D. in Communication at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and her scholarship examines LGBTQ media, digital cultures, and constructions of national identity. Besides Cancel Culture, a second book, Mainstreaming Gays: Critical Convergences of Queer Media, Fan Cultures, and Commercial Television is forthcoming with Rutgers University Press (2023). Her work has also been published in Communication, Culture & Critique, Development and Change, Feminist Media Studies, Feminist Studies, International Journal of Communication, Journal of Film and Video, Journal of Lesbian Studies, New Review of Film and Television Studies, Popular Communication, Television & New Media, and Transformative Works and Culture. She is an associate editor for Communication, Culture & Critique, and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Lesbian Studies and Transformative Works and Cultures. She serves on the Strategic Planning Task Force for the International Communication Association.