Prophet Muhammad stated, “A white has no superiority over black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action.” Because of the continual idea of race as a social construct, this study examines the memoirs of Douglass, Jacobs and Malcolm X, as it relates to the narrative of self and identity. They have written their personal autobiographies utilizing diction as a tool that develops their art of storytelling about their distinct life journeys. These protagonists utilize their autobiographical experiences to construct a generational transference of race and identity from when Douglass was born in 1818, to Jacob’s escape to freedom in 1838 to the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965. Historically, the texts are written from where slavery was still an institution until it was abolished in 1865, proceeding through to the Civil Rights movement. Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs and Malcolm X will experience racial trauma throughout their personal narratives that were life-altering events that severely influenced them as they matured from adolescence to adulthood. The writer has determined that, “Racial trauma can be chracterized as being physically and or psychologically damaged because of one’s race or skin color that permanently has long lasting negative effects on an individual’s thoughts, behavior or emotions,” i.e., African American victims of police brutality are racially traumatized because they suffer with behavioral problems and stress, after their encounters. This case study is based on the definition of race as a social construct for Douglass, Jacobs and Malcolm X’s narratives that learn to self-identify beyond the restrictions of racial discrimination which eventually manifests into white oppression in a world that does not readily embrace them. Their autobiographies provide self-reflection and a broad comprehension about how and why they were entrenched by race. Douglass, Jacobs and Malcolm X were stereotyped, socially segregated, and internalized awareness of despair because of their race. Conclusions drawn from Frederick Douglass-Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: American Slave, Harriet Jacobs-Incidences of a Slave Girl, and Malcolm X’s- Autobiography of Malcolm X will exemplify the subject of African American narrators countering racism and maneuvering in society.

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Excerpt: Besides the lead character herself, the leather-clad vampire Spike -- introduced as the "Big Bad" in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS) Season 2 -- the most analyzed character in the Buffyverse.

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Book Summary: Popular culture helps construct, define, and impact our everyday realities and must be taken seriously because popular culture is, simply, popular. Communication Perspectives on Popular Culture brings together communication experts with diverse backgrounds, from interpersonal communication, business and organizational communication, mass communication, media studies, narrative, rhetoric, gender studies, autoethnography, popular culture studies, and journalism. The contributors tackle such topics as music, broadcast and Netflix television shows, movies, the Internet, video games, and more, as they connect popular culture to personal concerns as well as larger political and societal issues. The variety of approaches in these chapters are simultaneously situated in the present while building a foundation for the future, as contributors explore new and emerging ways to approach popular culture. From case studies to emerging theories, the contributors examine how popular culture, media, and communication influence our everyday lives.

Polymedia, transmedia, and spreadable media are all relatively new foundational theories of mediated communication in need of further interrogation and examination. The panelists examine various aspects of these theories, through differing case studies within popular culture. The examinations in this panel include what it means to “own” players in fantasy football, the language based critical comedy of George Carlin, the flows and “traces” in the Whedonverse, and the phenomenon of Sharknado.

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This paper examines the way journalists have covered national anthem protests since Colin Kaepernick began kneeling in late 2016. It analyzes the language used to discuss the protest in order to discover how the media obscured Kaepernick’s initial intent. It then assesses the language used in discussion of subsequent protests in professional sports, concluding that writers learned how to better frame their subjects from the public’s reception to and understanding of Kaepernick. In the early days of his demonstration, stories often lacked crucial information: whether it was general context, or the approval of Green Beret Nate Boyer. The paper circles back to Kaepernick, discussing his Nike ad campaign, its media coverage, and how capitalizing on his fame obfuscated his movement forever. From this, we learn the importance of active reading and paying attention to the biases or misinformation in media coverage.

Over the past several years I have been on a quest to locate a world beyond the one I’ve been presented. I am interested in the history of atomic particles - like everything that radiates off of a monument (both literally and those things that are metaphorically reified) - invisible things, and the ways in which these things insect beyond our knowledge systems. This inquiry takes many forms. Mine is a conceptually based practice linked to record keeping and time, and the ways in which these concepts find plurality within our culture; or more pointedly, the importance that we attach to “time” and “the record”, as they relate to our “legacies”, “cultures”, or “the canon”; our histories and the ahistorical, the prehistorical, fantasies, the things that never happened but could’ve, imagined futures and parallel universes.