Overview
Despite widespread exposure and access to other cultures in a digitalising world, global cultural encounters often reveal past, unequal power relations (colonialism, conflict, trade, globalisation, etc.) and their resultant cumulative prejudice, which continue to govern the terms of these engagements. Presentations of ‘diversity’ through popular media appear in stark contrast to political and economic discourses, which villainise the figure of the immigrant - the ubiquitous global ‘Other’.
This talk will use music and rhyme to look at the idea of the immigrant in different societies, and analyse how the characterisation of the ‘Other’ shifts in image from place to place, but not in what it is used to represent. It will use global pop culture to demonstrate how the fluctuating connotations of a word, an image, or an encounter can lay bare the shifting realities of a postcolonial world that is still taking shape.
Speaker
Dr Paroma Ghose is a sociocultural historian currently working as a postdoctoral researcher in the ‘Confronting Decline’ project at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, Germany.
In her doctoral thesis, she used the lyrics of French rap songs to write a history of the ‘Other’ in France (1981 -2012). Her postdoctoral research has two related but distinct strains: her work in Munich looks at deindustrialization in Western Europe through musical narratives, while her independent research analyses postcolonial voices and the shaping of the modern world using South Korean popular music as its principal lens.
Details
This is a hybrid event, which will take place in-person in the Gatsby Room (Chancellor's Centre) and also on Zoom.
If you would like to attend online, please register for the Zoom link.
Refreshments will be available for the in-person audience.
Access
This event will take place in the Gatsby Room on the first floor of the Chancellor's Centre. It has step-free access with a lift and there is an accessible toilet located each floor of the building.
Wolfson Humanities Society
The Humanities Society organises regular talks spanning a wide range of topics which take place every Tuesday during term time - please sign up to their mailing list to keep up to date with their upcoming events.