Annual Symposium
Each March, the WGSS program celebrates Women’s History Month with a day-long symposium focusing on one central theme and featuring panels of scholars, activists, and journalists in dialogue with one another and their audience. This innovative symposium is open to Northeastern faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, and interested parties from outside the university. Not a typical academic conference, the symposium features lively, accessible discussions of topics relevant to a broad audience. To view more information about past symposia, please click here.
The eleventh annual Women’s History Month Symposium will be held on Friday, March 21, 2025 in the Cabral Center at the John D. O’Bryant African American Institute. “Pictures, Words, and Lies: Representing Gender & Race in the News Media” will focus on the news media in its broadest sense and how it reports on gender, race, and marginalized identities. Here, we intend to examine the multi-faceted term “media” as representation, creation, industry, ideology, and collective practice. In curated conversations, panelists will examine how progressive social movements are (mis)represented in mainstream media and news, but also how we attempt to challenge those narrow and false depictions.
Key questions for this symposium include: What is feminist journalism? How do anti-racist and feminist methodologies of truth-seeking alter journalism? Can mainstream media ever really be feminist? How do new forms of media provide platforms for marginalized voices? Are some forms of media more conducive to feminist content? How can we change the tired tropes that misrepresent gendered and raced subjects? What are the limits/potentials that exist in the current media ecosystem for the pressing issues of our times, including reproductive justice, democracy, Black lives, trans lives? How have journalistic ethics shifted in an age where news and entertainment are conflated? What are the boundaries of news media outlets and how are they dis/respected?
The symposium will use the frame of pictures, words, and lies. We will convene a group of interdisciplinary scholars, practitioners, journalists, photographers, and media-makers to dissect the many ways the news media construct and present the identities of those on whom it reports. Speakers will separately address power and possibilities in the domains of image and text.
Watch this page to see more information about the panelists and panels as we approach the event and for information on registration. As always, the event will be free, but space will be limited. We look forward to seeing you in March!