PhD Candidate Daniella Orias Publishes Article in Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

PhD Candidate Daniella Orias has published a new open access journal article titled "'No Ifs, Ands, or Butts': Analyzing Race and Gender in Sex and the City Through Black Feminist Theory" in Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy. The article emerged from a seminar paper written in Dr. Fox’s course Black Feminism and reflects Orias’s ongoing scholarly engagement with race, gender, media, and representation.

The article examines a single episode of Sex and the City to explore how race and gender are constructed within a television series often celebrated as feminist and progressive. Drawing on Black feminist theory, the analysis considers how limited appearances of Black characters shape meaning and reinforce uneven power dynamics within the narrative.

Quote from the Abstract: 

The analysis focuses on two Black characters who were featured only in one episode of the series, Adeena and Chivon, and examines how the show portrays harmful stereotypes such as the angry Black woman (Adeena) and sexualized Black male (Chivon) in the episode. These limited and harmful representations are further scrutinized by the fact that the show is often hailed by many to be a liberal, feminist program that was revolutionary to see on screen in the late 90s. While the show does attempt to showcase female empowerment and sexuality, it is only done in a positive light for the White female characters, who are the main characters that the show revolves around. Blackness is predominantly absent, aside from a few guest characters sprinkled in, which is why it is imperative to investigate and analyze how the show portrays Black individuals. Since representation is so finite in the Sex and the City universe, the portrayal of Black individuals becomes an important point to focus on to identify how the show negotiates topics of race and gender.