2017 Tsou Scholar Kyra Gaunt
Thursday, November 2, 7 p.m.
Helen Filene Ladd Hall, Zankel Music Center
Lecture: Keep Dat A$$ Jumpin: Tween Black Girls and the Costs of Corporate-Controlled User-Generated Content
How do corporate-controlled musical spaces and online engagment normalize the sexploitation
of the tween Black girlsā online? From studying over 600 YouTube twerking videos (2008ā14),
we will discuss the ābottom linesā at the intersections of race, gender, age, and
digital technology. Who profits and who is exploited by the free musical play and
monetizing of music that dominates YouTube?
Kyra Grant of the State University of New York at Albany, one of the earliest professors
to teach hip-hop, helped define the emerging field of girlhood and black girlhood
studies.
Tickets: $8 adults, $5 seniors/Skidmore, free for students and children
About the Speaker
Ethnomusicologist Kyra Gaunt is professor, author, YouTube ethnographer, and a TED
fellow whose work contributed to the emergence of black girlhood studies and hip-hop
feminism. Author of the prize-winning book The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop, she studies participatory music and the unintended consequences of race, gender,
and technology for members of marginalized groups from YouTube to Wikipedia. Gaunt
is also a classically trained vocalist, a jazz improviser, and an R&B singer-songwriter.
Her CD Be the True Revolution is available on iTunes and CDBaby.