Dr Kavyta Raghunandan

This book addresses the prejudices that emerged out of the collision of two pandemics: COVID-19 and racism. Offering a snapshot of experiences through counter storytelling and micro narratives, this collection assesses the racialised responses to the pandemic and investigates acts of discrimination that have occurred within social, political and historical contexts. Capturing the divisive discourses which have dominated this contemporary moment, this is a unique and creative resource that shows how structural racism continues to operate insidiously, offering invaluable insights for policy, practice and critical race and ethnic studies.This book addresses the prejudices that emerged out of the collision of two pandemics: COVID-19 and racism. Offering a snapshot of experiences through counter storytelling and micro narratives, this collection assesses the racialised responses to the pandemic and investigates acts of discrimination that have occurred within social, political and historical contexts. Capturing the divisive discourses which have dominated this contemporary moment, this is a unique and creative resource that shows how structural racism continues to operate insidiously, offering invaluable insights for policy, practice and critical race and ethnic studies.

Since the worldwide theatrical release of one of the most talked about films of 2015 on Valentine’s Day weekend, Fifty Shades of Grey has continued to generate immense interest, much as the novel did when first published in 2012. Some of the main sticky points raised, amidst the soaring box office collections, were the flummoxing popularity of the novels and film, a dull plot, lack of chemistry between the protagonists, and the contested representations of gender and sexuality. This article is premised on the idea that female sexuality and female-focused erotic pleasure, in the context of Hollywood cinema, is a contested terrain which throws more shade and less heat to the latter. In this paper, I show that the film’s inability to convey female sexuality and pleasure as an experience rather than ‘to-be-looked-at’ is indicative of the gender politics of Hollywood which legitimises hetero-sexist tropes as I claim the Fifty Shades film does under the guise of a love story. I demonstrate that this film adaptation, while mainly targeted towards a female audience, invariably reifies and upholds the dominant cinematic framework of Hollywood, and that is the male gaze (Mulvey 2003).

This chapter sets up the national event of Carnival in Trinidad as a contested space of liberation and tradition. It explores the intersections of gender and race for a group of young Indian Trinidadian women and highlights the ways in which agency, articulated as sexual liberation and ‘free-up’, is enabled and disabled in relation to mas performance.

This chapter provides a critical overview of the debates on how new developments in the digital age, such as forms of social media, specifically social networking sites, are influencing the social, cultural, and geographical dimensions of young people’s friendships. As a distinctive aspect of young people’s lives, friendships are regarded as sites of companionship, support, and at times intimacy but can also be fraught with anxieties or difficulties. Social networking sites are new technological platforms that exist explicitly to facilitate the practice of friendship. However, there are diverse opinions in both the scholarly and popular literature on the extent to which these sites and other forms of social media are transforming the nature and meaning of contemporary friendship. A range of commentators also debate in sometimes quite polarizing terms whether the net effects of these new social media are positive and negative. This chapter explores how social media practices shape friendship for young people and argues that it is unproductive to take a binaristic view of the effects of social media as young people in the digital age are diverse in the ways they “do” friendship and in the ways they mobilize newer social resources that have opened up to them.

In recent times, there has been an emerging movement of menstrual activism on social media that attempts to address the absence of positive representations of menstruation. I am drawn to the collective feminist project of challenging and eradicating stereotypes of women’s bodies by exploring how social media, whether through blogging or posting pictures, has allowed young women to cast normal female bodily processes in a more positive light. If for many years, staining has signified shame, it can be said that 2015 was the year periods went public in a social media movement that seeks to discuss and deconstruct the stigmas stuck to menstruation.

This book takes a journey into the new and exciting created by a the wave of Indian comedians today, described affectionately here as the New Indian Nuttahs, and looks at what these tell us about identity, Indianness, censorship, feminism diaspora and millennial India. It provides a unique analysis into the growing phenomenon of internet comedy and into a dimension of Indian popular culture which has long been dominated by the traditional film and television industries. Through a mixture of close textual readings of online comedy videos and interviews with content creators and consumers in India, this book provides a fresh perspective on comedy studies in its approach to a global South context from a sociocultural perspective. As a protean form of new media, this has opened up new avenues of articulation, identification and disidentification and as such, this book makes a further contribution to South Asian, communication, media & cultural studies.

Rooted in lived experiences and real conversations, this book challenges mixed-race studies which often prioritise Black/white binaries in the Global North while excluding multiracial experiences across the Global South.

There has long been a refusal to regard race as a legitimate category of analysis in higher education, whether from a scholarship or policy perspective. The recognition of the role that universities have played in (re)producing racial injustice is one that is being gradually taken up by scholars who challenge this ignorance by drawing attention to racialised cultures and practices. As a British Asian early career researcher who has found herself at various points in her working life at these charged junctures, it is my firm and absolute belief that these conversations are overdue. Though higher education (HE) is generally regarded as a liberal and progressive space, I offer a counter-narrative in locating myself in this environment in which racial microaggressions (Pierce, 1970) are the norm in order to "keep those at the racial margins in their place" (Pérez Huber & Solórzano, 2015). This article seeks to briefly illustrate some of the ways in which race is experienced through working in HEI with a specific focus on South Asian descent academics. There is a limited understanding of the diversity of British Asians as an ethnic category which is often conflated with an even further limited understanding of Muslimness. This manifests not only in HEI but in the cultural industries and the shaping of the British curriculum, both key sites of knowledge production which circulate discourses about ‘the other’ and in which South Asian communities are either stereotyped or silenced.

This book seeks to examine the complexity of the collision of the pandemics of COVID-19 and racism that become evident when examining the intersection between race, health, public policy and culture. The contributions in this edited collection are an important intervention in speaking back to dominant discourses and the 13 chapters that make up this collection cover a range of facets that have been organised according to key themes that are outlined in this chapter.

Race, Gender, and the Politics of Representation in Scandal Simone Adams, Kimberly R. Moffitt, Ronald L. Jackson. 8. #Olitz. The Erotics of (E)Racing in Scandal kavyta kay there are a multitude of blogs, websites, and social media platforms ...

This study investigates the educational experiences of African Zimbabwean males as they moved to England, shedding light on a previously understudied aspect of educational migration during 2000-2020. At this time, many Zimbabwean males transitioned into English schools and experienced the changing dynamics from majority to minority. Understanding the significance of prior education becomes crucial. However, little attention has been devoted to the lived experiences of African Zimbabwean males within these two educational systems. Employing the counter-storytelling research design of Critical Race Theory, this study investigates the lived educational experiences of seven African Zimbabwean males selected through purposive sampling. The data collection process involved audio-recorded semi-structured interviews conducted between December 2019 and February 2020. The narrative analysis revealed these individuals' challenges in navigating academic expectations and social and cultural shifts upon their transition to English schools. The study emphasises the need to address educational disparities affecting racialised migrant students transitioning into English schools, especially from marginalised communities. This study fills a significant gap in the research by examining African Zimbabwean students' practical challenges and academic achievements within the English education system. The participants' stories reveal African Zimbabwean males' unique linguistic and academic identities, often overlooked within broader Black African classifications. The study also highlights how racial biases in England affect the educational potential of African Zimbabwean males. The research emphasises how race, class, and gender intersect to shape the educational path of African Zimbabwean males. It also highlights the challenges faced by immigrants from a colonised nation in the immigration process and the English education system. This emphasises the need for policy interventions to promote inclusivity and equal opportunities for all students, regardless of their background or migration status.