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ONLINE ONLY:Know Sci-Fi & Fantasy - The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination

Dr. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas  Event Type: Adult Program
Age Group(s): Adult
Date: 10/23/2020
Start Time: 12:00 PM
End Time: 1:30 PM
Description:
 View the program here https://youtu.be/LkoGvW-Yuo4 or click "View Program Here" above.

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Examine BIPOC representation in fantasy through worlds like those of The Hunger Games and Harry Potter with Dr. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas.

Stories provide portals into other worlds, both real and imagined. The promise of escape draws people from all backgrounds to speculative fiction, but when people of color seek passageways into the fantastic, the doors are often barred. This problem lies not only with children’s publishing, but also with the television and film executives tasked with adapting these stories into a visual world. When characters of color do appear, they are often marginalized or subjected to violence, reinforcing for audiences that not all lives matter.

The Dark Fantastic is an engaging and provocative exploration of race in popular youth and young adult speculative fiction. Grounded in her experiences as YA novelist, fanfiction writer, and scholar of education, Thomas considers four black girl protagonists from some of the most popular stories of the early 21st century: Bonnie Bennett from the CW’s The Vampire Diaries, Rue from Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, Gwen from the BBC’s Merlin, and Angelina Johnson from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter. Analyzing their narratives and audience reactions to them reveals how these characters mirror the violence against black and brown people in our own world.

In response, Thomas uncovers and builds upon a tradition of fantasy and radical imagination in Black feminism and Afrofuturism to reveal new possibilities. Through fanfiction and other modes of counter-storytelling, young people of color have reinvisioned fantastic worlds that reflect their own experiences, their own lives. As Thomas powerfully asserts, “we dark girls deserve more, because we are more.”

Ebony Elizabeth Thomas is Associate Professor in the Literacy, Culture, and International Educational Division at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. A former Detroit Public Schools teacher and National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, she was a member of the NCTE Cultivating New Voices Among Scholars of Color’s 2008-2010 cohort, served on the NCTE Conference on English Education's Executive Committee from 2013 until 2017, and is the immediate past chair of the NCTE Standing Committee on Research. Currently, she serves as co-editor of Research of the Teaching of English, and her most recent book is The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games (NYU Press, 2019).

The Dark Fantastic:
https://dpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/1790426094

Pick up a copy of The Dark Fantastic at your local bookstore:
https://www.roundaboutbookshop.com/book/9781479806072



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Library: All Branches
Contact: Paige M. Ferro
Contact Number: (541) 312-1063
Presenter: Dr. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
Link: View Program Here