Carolyn West, professor of psychology at the University of Washington Tacoma, will speak on “’Let Me Tell Ya’ll about Black Chicks’: Images of Black Women in Pornography.” West will analyze the racist and hyper-sexualized images of black women in contemporary pornography and discuss the effects of this material in people’s lives.

An expert on the racial and gender dimensions of abuse, West teaches courses on sexuality, sexual violence, and family violence. She is the editor of Violence in the Lives of Black Women: Battered, Black, and Blue, a collection by therapists, researchers, activists, and survivors that shows how the intersection of many kinds of oppression shapes the lives of black women. She creates culturally sensitive domestic violence/sexual assault education materials and conducts trainings with activists and agencies. Among her recent articles are “Living in a Web of Trauma: An Ecological Examination of Violence among African Americans” and “Mammy, Sapphire, Jezebel, and the Bad Girls of Reality Television: Media Representations of Black Women.”

The event is co-sponsored by the School of Journalism and the Senior Fellows honors program of the College of Communication.

More information on the Facebook event page, or contact Robert Jensen, rjensen@austin.utexas.edu.

This presentation includes graphic, explicit images that may be disturbing to some viewers. No one under 18 should attend.

Location: University of Texas, Belo Center for New Media (BMC 1.202), 300 W. Dean Keeton, Austin