This dissertation examines how Black influencers navigate the highly competitive commercial terrain of influencing. Situated within literature about the commodification of the Black feminine body, neoliberal discourses about individualized digital labor, and the racialization of discourses about Black labor and success, I argue that celebrity status flattens and makes palatable political projects easily consumed by digital audiences. In particular, brands and digital media companies appropriate woke culture at the expense of Black communities, influencers, and people by propping up economic solutions to racial strife and diversifying their public facing images. By offering individualized, market-based solutions, brands and media outlets obscure the systemic forces that plague Black influencers who are precariously positioned within a mode of digital labor that lacks a supportive infrastructure and exacerbates their vulnerabilities. Contextualized by the George Floyd protests of 2020, I further argue that Black influencers do not internalize neoliberal logics or pursue aspirational labor in the same way as their white counterparts due to the material vulnerabilities and systemic pressures explicitly shaping Black women’s experiences on visually oriented platforms such as Instagram and YouTube. Rather, Black influencers challenge traditional definitions of influencing, traversing the line between ‘conventional’ and political work by actively addressing the way systemic issues permeate the sphere of digital labor. Although Black influencers adopt a hustle and grind mentality indicative of neoliberal governmentality, they also work to reclaim their bodies, voices, and individuality against a space fraught with the politics of representation. / Media & Communication

Given the ongoing persistence of anti-Black racism in Ontario education, I enact a curriculum of Black Excellence and antiracism. In partnership with the Ottawa Carleton District School Board and propelled by calls to action from The Ministry of Education and Black advocacy organization, I ask how The Sankofa Centre of Black Excellence course and program may address these systems of racism. I draw on Critical Race Theory as both a theoretical framework and overarching methodology of analysis for my thesis. In the first of three articles within this thesis I begin by framing my understanding of antiracism with an overview of the possibilities and limitation of Culturally Relevant and Responsive Pedagogy in Ontario public schooling contexts. In the second article, I draw on the literature and method of Critical Race Currere to understand antiracism and Black excellence in relation to teaching the Sankofa course. In the third article, I draw on a social action curriculum project research methodology to analyze and synthesize the course curriculum-as-planned and -lived. Finally, I suggest that the continued engagement with Aoki’s (1993) concept of a curriculum-as-lived serves as a departing point for engaging with broader conversations surrounding Black excellence and antiracism curriculum in the Ontario educational system.