Dr. Drew Morton, assistant professor of mass communication and Texas A&M University-Texarkana’s Scholar of the Year, will present a Program for Learning and Community Engagement SuperLecture titiled “#OscarsSoWhite: Racial Diversity and White Washing in Hollywood” on Tuesday, April 11, at 11 a.m. in University Center 210 on the A&M-Texarkana campus at 7101 University Ave., Texarkana, Texas.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
The SuperLecture will focus on race and Hollywood, particularly in the context of last year’s #OscarsSoWhite boycott, the ascension of African-American film over the past year, and the financial and critical reception of the new blockbuster “The Ghost and the Shell.”
“I gave this super lecture last fall and paired it with a screening of the film “Color Adjustment,” but the event was so well received and the subject matter is still relevant that I thought I’d offer to do it again,” Dr. Morton said. “Plus, there is a personal variable involved: my wife, the daughter of two Mexican immigrants, was one of the data researchers assigned to the Directors Guild of America’s Diversity Report for years. Last month, she moved on to a new job at the Oscars. So, needless to say, this subject is a common one around our dinner table.”
Dr. Morton is a co-founder and co-editor of [in]Transition, the first openly peer reviewed academic journal of videographic film and moving image studies. The journal, which is a co-production of NYU Press’s MediaCommons and the Society of Cinema and Media Studies’ (SCMS) Cinema Journal, recently won an Award of Distinction in the 2015 SCMS Anne Friedberg Innovative Scholarship Competition.
PLACE is a faculty-led program designed to create a community of learners comprising A&M-Texarkana students, faculty, staff and the community at large.
“Faculty members annually choose a common theme around which to organize a lecture series and other activities that provide focal points for learning and discussion,” said Dr. Michael Perri, associate professor of history and chair of the PLACE Committee. This year’s theme is “Race and Ethnicity.”
PLACE’s goal is to expose its community of learners to a diversity of ideas from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds.
For more information, contact Dr. Michael Perri at Michael.Perri@tamut.edu or Dr. Craig Nakashian at Craig.Nakashian@tamut.edu.
