Ph.D., University of California, San Diego, 2005
Office: CMU 339
E-Mail: rljoseph@uw.edu
Ralina L. Joseph, associate professor in UW’s Department of Communication and adjunct associate professor in the Departments of American Ethnic Studies and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, San Diego and B. A. in American Civilization from Brown University.
Dr. Joseph is interested in the mediated communication of difference, or, more specifically, contemporary representations of race, gender, and sexuality in the media. Her first book, Transcending Blackness: From the New Millennium Mulatta to the Exceptional Multiracial (Duke University Press, 2012), critiques anti-Black racism in mixed-race African American representations in the decade leading up to Obama’s 2008 election. Listen to the interview about her new book on Seattle’s NPR affiliate, KUOW. She is currently working on her second book project, Speaking Back to Screens: How Black Women on Television Resist PostIdentity Culture, a television studies examination of African American women’s resistance to “postidentity,” the ostensibly “after” moment of racism and sexism, and race- and gender-based identities. With her UW colleagues Janine Jones (Education) and Alexes Harris (Sociology) as co-editors, and members of the group she co-founded, WIRED (Women Investigating Race, Ethnicity, and Difference) as contributors, Dr. Joseph is also developing an edited collection on women of color in higher education.
Learn more about studying in Barbados with Prof. Joseph in the Summer of 2013 >>
Selected Writings
Articles:
Ralina L. Joseph. “Imagining Obama: Reading Overtly and Inferentially Racist Images of our 44th President, 2007–2008.” Communication Studies. Vol. 62, No. 4, September 2011.
Ralina L. Joseph. “Hope is Finally Making a Comeback’: First Lady Reframed.” Communication, Culture and Critique Vol. 4 No. 1, March 2011.
Ralina L. Joseph. “Tyra Banks Is Fat: Reading (Post-) Racism and (Post-) Feminism in the New Millennium.” Critical Studies in Media Communication. Vol. 26 No. 3. Fall 2009. Reprinted in Gail Dines and Jean Humez, eds., Race, Class, Gender, a Reader, December 2010.
Classes
Undergraduate:
Communicating Difference (COM/AES/GWSS 289): Large lecture course examining the communication of difference and diversity in the 21st century U.S. Teaching Fall 2012.
Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality in the Media (COM/AES/GWSS 389): Survey course examining the cultural forces and implications of race, gender, and sexuality in the media.
Representing Beyond the Binaries: Mixing Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Media (COM/AES 490/GWSS 486): Course examining the realities and ramifications of mixed-race representations in mass media and the broader social and political dynamics in U.S. culture. Teaching Fall 2012.
Black Cultural Studies (COM/AES/GWSS 489): Course examining historical, social, political, legal, and media discourses about Blackness in U.S. culture. Teaching Winter 2013.
Graduate:
Black Cultural Studies (COM 563): Course examining historical, social, political, legal, and media discourses about Blackness in U.S. culture.
Reading Race in Cultural Studies Theories and Methods (COM 597): Methods course using central analytic of race in cultural studies.
Visual Culture Theories and Methods (COM 597): Methods course focusing on strategies of reading visual cultural representations. Teaching Winter 2013.
