Sister Style: the Politics of Appearance for Black Women in Public Life
Posted in G+JI Events Lectures
A Book Talk with Nadia E. Brown and Danielle Casarez Lemi
Sister Style: The Politics of Appearance for Black Women Political Elites
Friday March 25, 2022
12:30 PM ET – Virtual Event
Zoom Captioned and ASL Interpreted
Presented by Gender+ Justice Initiative, DC Public Library, Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service and Women’s Center
Moderated by Jamil Scott, Assistant Professor of Government, Georgetown University
Join us in welcoming co-authors Nadia E. Brown and Danielle Casarez Lemi for a discussion on their new book, entitled Sister Style: The Politics of Appearance for Black Women Political Elites (Oxford University Press, 2021).
Sister Style asks readers the following questions: What do the politics of appearance for Black women mean for Black women politicians and for Black voters who evaluate them? What are the origins of the contemporary focus on Black women’s bodies in public life? How do Black women politicians themselves make sense of the politics of appearance? And how do voters process the appearances of Black women candidates?
The authors center Black women’s bodies, specifically their hair texture and skin tone, to evaluate how the historical legacies that shape current cultural and political contexts dictate Black women elites’ political experiences and voter evaluations of them. Join our authors for a discussion on how intra-categorical differences among Black women, particularly an affinity towards Eurocentric beauty and social standards, impact the candidacies and political behavior of various Black women politicians.
About the authors:
Nadia E. Brown has recently joined our Georgetown faculty as a Professor of Government, affiliate in the African American Studies program, and chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. Prior to joining Georgetown in fall 2021, Professor Brown was an Associate Professor of Political Science and African American Studies at Purdue University. Brown is an award-winning scholar, her works including, but not limited to: lead editor of Politics, Groups and Identities; Sisters in the Statehouse: Black Women and Legislative Decision Making (Oxford University Press, 2014); and a co-PI on the project, “#MeTooPoliSci Leveraging A Professional Association to Address Sexual Harassment in Political Science.”
Danielle Casarez Lemi is a Tower Center Fellow at the John G. Tower Center for Political Studies at Southern Methodist University. Her specialization is in representation in American politics, with a focus on identity, race, and gender. Her work can be found in Politics, Groups, and Identities, Du Bois Review, Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics, PS: Political Science and Politics, British Journal of Political Science, and Perspectives on Politics.
More information about Sister Style:
An interview with Nadia E. Brown hand Danielle Casarez Lemi – New Books Network
This event is free and open to all
Accommodation requests can be made at genderjustice@georgetown.edu