Just About that Action, Boss: Sporting Blackness and the Televisual Politics and Pleasures of Marshawn Lynch

Just About that Action, Boss: Sporting Blackness and the Televisual Politics and Pleasures of Marshawn Lynch

A Talk by Dr. Samantha Sheppard (Cornell University)
Friday, December 1, 6:00 pm
Michelson Theater, 721 Broadway

Co-sponsored by the Center for Media, Culture, and History

In this talk I attend to the televisual politics and pleasures that constellate around former professional football player Marshawn Lynch. An Oakland native, Lynch has gained widespread notoriety for his mediagenic resistance: a surly and sardonic demeanor, and an increasing disengagement with sports journalists during mandatory press conferences. Analyzing both his press conferences and his rise as a media star, I consider how Lynch's sporting blackness articulates and disrupts televisual logics and racial scripts of black athletic celebrity.

Free and open to the public. RSVP required.
 

About the speaker

Samantha N. Sheppard is an associate professor of cinema and media studies in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University. She is the author of Sporting Blackness: Race, Embodiment, and Critical Muscle Memory on Screen (University of California Press, 2020). In 2021, she was named an Academy Film Scholar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.