Two American academics whose research explores what some are calling the new ‘post-civil rights’ protest movement will be giving an open lecture at the University of Kent on Thursday, 29th October at 18.00 in Keynes Lecture Theatre 6.

Entitled, ‘The Hate that an anti-hate Movement Produced: Subversion, Backlash and Misunderstanding in of/the Movement for Black Lives’ all are welcome at this lecture, and there will be an opportunity for further discussion with the speakers at a reception afterwards.

Dr Monica Miller and Dr James Peterson (Lehigh University, Pennsylvania) will discuss the current Black Lives Matter movement in the U.S. exploring how mainstream American media has often misportrayed and misunderstood this social protest movement. In particular, the speakers will examine how social media has transformed strategies of social protest amongst marginalised communities of colour, giving rise to both possibilities and misuses in its adoption as a protest platform.

About the speakers:
Monica R. Miller is Assistant Professor of Religion & Africana Studies and Director of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Lehigh University. Miller is the author of Religion and Hip Hop (Routledge) and co-editor of The Hip and Religion Reader (Routledge) and Religion in Hip Hop: Mapping the New Terrain in the US (Bloomsbury. Miller currently serves as a Senior Research Fellow with the Institute for Humanist Studies, contributing editor at Marginalia, and is a member of the Culture on the Edge international scholarly collaborative.

James Braxton Peterson is the Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University. His first book, ‘The Hip Hop Underground and African American Culture’ was published on Palgrave Macmillan press (2014). Peterson hosts ‘The Remix’ – a podcast that engages issues at the intersection of race, politics, and popular culture. He writes for the Huffington Post and The Guardian.