Dania Muhsen (she/her) is a third-year student in the Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service program at Georgetown University in Qatar. She is majoring in Culture and Politics, pursuing a certificate in American Studies, and minoring in History. Her academic interests lie at the intersection of digital culture, media, representation, and gender, with a particular interest in how women’s identities and cultural narratives are constructed, circulated, and received in digital spaces. Dania currently works as a Student Assistant in GU-Q’s Office of Communications, where she supports the organization and presentation of the university’s stories and digital content. Through this work, she has developed an interest in how communication can shape the ways different audiences encounter and interpret people, ideas, and narratives. In her free time, Dania enjoys arts and crafts, exploring museums and galleries, and watching movies.
Project: The Price of Taking Up Space: Controlling Narratives, Black Womanhood, and the Politics of Visibility in Hip-Hop Media (working title)
This research examines how media narratives construct, contain, and punish Black women’s public authority in hip-hop across different historical and digital contexts. Using Lauryn Hill and Megan Thee Stallion as comparative case studies, the project asks how Black women artists’ assertiveness, creative authority, and intellectual expression are framed in public discourse, and what the persistence of these narratives across decades reveals about the intersection of race, gender, and commercial power. Lauryn Hill serves as a historical anchor, particularly in examining the shift from her celebration as a groundbreaking artist following The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill to media narratives that increasingly characterized her confidence, withdrawal, and critiques as signs of instability or dysfunction. Megan Thee Stallion’s public treatment following her 2020 shooting and subsequent legal case provides a contemporary comparison, particularly regarding the public questioning, mockery, and delegitimization of her testimony and authority. Drawing on Black feminist theory, particularly Patricia Hill Collins’s concept of controlling images and feminist scholarship on representation and intersectionality, this project argues that these patterns reflect a structural tension in which Black women are granted significant cultural visibility while their authority remains subject to narrow conditions. Methodologically, the project employs comparative discourse analysis of digital media, including profiles, reviews, opinion pieces, and social media discourse. It traces recurring language, framing, and narrative structures to identify how Black women’s deviations from expected femininity, deference, or respectability are interpreted and circulated. Ultimately, this research explores the gap between Black women’s cultural influence and their sovereignty within industries that profit from their visibility, asking what it means to be highly visible without being fully believed, protected, or permitted authority.