Black feminist ethnomusicologist Professor Kyra Gaunt will bring her provocative lecture style to York Tuesday with her talk, “YouTube Twerking & You: The Context Collapse of Black Girls’ Always-On Self-Presentation”, as the fourth-annual speaker in the Alexander F. Chamberlain Children’s Studies Speaker Series.
Specializing in the study and performance of musical blackness and digital ethnography, Gaunt speaks and writes extensively on gender bias, institutional racism, hip-hop culture and social media.
“The Chamberlain Speaker Series is intended to challenge and inspire Children’s Studies students to think about the lived experience and cultures of contemporary children and youth,” says Professor Peter Cummings, coordinator of the Children’s Studies program. “Kyra Gaunt has much to offer not only to children’s studies students and faculty but also to everyone at York interested in culture and expression, gender, sexuality and women’s studies, girlhood studies, communication studies, music, dance, digital media and African-American studies.”
Gaunt describes herself as a “writer, speaker, singer, vlogger and educator who empowers emerging adults to own their own greatness.” She is author of The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop (New York University Press, 2006) and the e-book The Audacity of Humanity, a collection of short personal essays about social justice, written by 39 contributors, aged 10 to 63, from five continents.
Everyone is welcome to attend the Chamberlain Speaker Series Tuesday, Feb. 25 at 5:30pm in 135 Vanier College. Admission is free, and the talk will be followed by an informal reception from 6:30 to 7:30pm in the Renaissance Room at 001 Vanier College, Keele campus.
For more information about the Alexander F. Chamberlain Speaker Series, contact Peter Cumming, coordinator of the Children’s Studies program, at cummingp@yorku.ca or 416-736- 2100 ext. 60498.