Media Nights, Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Note: Seating begins at 5:30pm. The event begins at 6:30pm sharp. Please arrive no later than 6:00pm.

Program:

6:30-7:50pm: Presentations by Katherine Fry, Marisol González and Racquel Gates

8:05—9:15pm: Roundtable discussion and Q&A with the presenters about careers in media production and research, moderated by Prof. Hashmi

Speaker Bios:

KATHERINE FRY's research and teaching interests include news and advertising criticism, media ecology, media literacy and research methods. In addition to numerous scholarly articles and book chapters, Fry is author of the books Constructing the Heartland: Television News and Natural Disaster (2003) and Identities in Context: Media, Myth, Religion In Space and Time (2008). She is Director of the interdisciplinary Communication B.A. program, and is also co-founder and former Education Director of The LAMP, a grass-roots media literacy organization based in New York City.

MARISOL GONZÁLEZ is a Dominican filmmaker and producer who lives in New York. She works for HBO producing sports programs in Spanish for HBO and HBO Latino. With almost 20 years in production, she has covered landmark events like the Pope’s visit to New York and the 1994 World Cup. She has also worked for the two major Hispanic networks in the country - Univisión and Telemundo NBC, and has contributed as a writer for newspapers and magazines. González graduated from Brooklyn College, with double majors in Broadcast Journalism and Spanish Literature. At present, she is directing and producing “Children Behind the Wall” (in production). In 2008, she was chosen as a woman who inspires the Latino community by “Siempre Mujer” magazine, together with Maria Elena Salinas and Ingrid Betancourt, and was awarded the Always Inspiring award. In 2011, Senator Peralta presented González with the Proclamation award during the celebration of Women’s Month as a token of gratitude for her outstanding service to the community. For two consecutive years, she has participated as a judge in the Dominican Republic Environmental Film Festival for the national short films competition, Globo Verde Dominicano. Gonzalez also had the honor to be a judge for the 35th Sports Emmy Awards this year.

RACQUEL GATES received her Ph.D. in Screen Cultures from Northwestern University after getting her M.A. from the University of Chicago and her B.S. from Georgetown University. She specializes in African American media, particularly representations of race in popular film and television. Her dissertation, Acting White: African Americans, Whiteface, and Post-Civil Rights Popular Culture, examines how African-American performances of whiteface in the post-Civil Rights era operate as a means of strategically navigating shifting tropes of blackness across time. In addition to film and media theory, Dr. Gates' research also incorporates gender, queer, and critical race theories. She is the author of “Keepin’ it reality television” in the anthology Watching While Black: Centering the Television of Black Audiences (Rutgers University Press, 2013).