Cognition, Stigma, and Inclusivity Roundtable
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For this Roundtable, we asked several leading scholars working on issues of social justice and cognition in film and media studies for a brief response to the prompt: “Explain one current theory, approach, or research finding that you think is particularly important in addressing stigma and inclusivity in screen media.” Participants drew from their own current work and insights, and they pointed to new strands of inquiry that they found exciting. Their responses represent a range of interests across diverse specialisms, and comprise an interdisciplinary showcase for the state of current research in social justice, cognition, and media, including ideas on how the fields could grow from here.
Contributor Notes
Tina M. Harris is Professor and Douglas L. Manship Sr.-Dori Maynard Race, Media, and Cultural Literacy Endowed Chair at Louisiana State University. Harris is an internationally renowned interracial communication scholar with particular interests in race, media representations, and racial social justice. Her pedagogy, research, and service at LSU are driven by her desire to empower others with the communication and critical thinking skills necessary for becoming global citizens. The end goal of these efforts is to equip students to use an applied approach where theory leads to practice in a world where racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity are a welcome inevitably.
Robert Lemelson is an anthropologist and filmmaker who works in Southeast Asia, particularly on the islands of Bali and Java. He founded Elemental Productions, an ethnographic documentary film production company, in 2007 and has directed and produced over a dozen ethnographic films related to culture, psychology and personal experience. These films have addressed the personal experience of mental illness and neuropsychiatric disorder, neurodiversity and developmental difference, trauma, gendered violence, stigma, and more. He teaches cultural, visual, and psychological anthropology at UCLA and USC. With co-author Annie Tucker he has published two books on the practice of visual psychological anthropology.
Annie Tucker is a writer, researcher, and translator specializing in Indonesian arts and culture. She received her PhD from UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures, where her dissertation addressed the shifting understandings of autism in Java, Indonesia. She was a lecturer for UCLA's Disability Studies minor from 2009-2014. She has been a writer for Elemental Productions, an independent ethnographic film company making documentaries about Indonesia, for over a decade. With co-author Robert Lemelson, she has published two books on the practice of visual psychological anthropology.
Srividya Ramasubramanian is Newhouse Professor & Endowed Chair in the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Her research focuses on critical media studies, decoloniality, and trauma- informed dialogues. She is the Founding Director of CODE^SHIFT lab, The Difficult Dialogues Project, and Media Rise (a global nonprofit).
Omotayo O. Banjo is a Professor of Communication at the University of Cincinnati and an Associate Dean of the Graduate College. She is a critical media effects scholar whose work centers on identity storytelling in entertainment media. Her work explores the interplay between Black diasporic audiences’ identities and Black cultural narratives.
Mette Hjort is Professor of Film and Screen Studies at the University of Lincoln and will soon be returning to Hong Kong, to take up a Chair Professorship at the Education University of Hong Kong. Mette's research has contributed to debates concerning film and small nations, cinema and risk, film and public value, transnational cinema, and motion pictures in the context of health and well-being. Mette's contributions have been recognised by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies which selected her as a “foundational scholar” for the Fieldnotes Project. Mette was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Aalborg in 2017.
Dan Flory is Professor of Philosophy at Montana State University. He is author of Philosophy, Black Film, Film Noir (Penn State University Press, 2008) and co-editor (with Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo) of Race, Philosophy, and Film (Routledge, 2013). He has written over thirty-five essays on philosophy, critical race theory, film, and the history of philosophy, which have appeared in venues such as Projections, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Film and Philosophy, A Companion to Film Noir, and Western Journal of Black Studies. His forthcoming book is titled Philosophy, Film Noir, and African American Cinema: Racing Shadow and Light (Bloomsbury).
Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo is professor of comparative ethnic studies and American studies and culture at Washington State University Vancouver. Her teaching and research spans race and racism in the United States and in U.S. popular culture and film, 9/11 cultural production, and critical globalization studies. She is author or co-author of seven published books, including Feminism After 9/11: Women's Bodies as Cultural and Political Threat (2017), Projecting 9/11: Race, Gender, and Citizenship in Recent Hollywood Films (2015), and Race, Philosophy, and Film (2015). She has also published over 40 journal articles and book chapters.
Amy Cook is the Vice Provost of Academic Affairs at Stony Brook University and Professor of English. Her scholarship integrates research from the cognitive sciences into critical questions within theatre and performance, with particular attention to Shakespeare. She has published Shakespearean Futures: Casting the Bodies of Tomorrow on Shakespeare's Stages Today (Cambridge Elements 2020), Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting (Michigan 2018), Shakespearean Neuroplay: Reinvigorating the Study of Dramatic Texts and Performance Through Cognitive Science (Palgrave 2010), and co-edited Theatre, Performance and Cognition: Languages, Bodies and Ecologies (Methuen 2016).