Lecture & Book Signing

For immediate release:

Cal State L.A. to Discuss
"Racism, Sexism, and the Media:
How It Still Constructs American Identities"

Los Angeles, CA -- A panel of prominent media scholars will explore the ways the media continues to manufacture racial and gendered identities in a lecture and book signing slated for Monday, April 19, 2-4 p.m., in the Maxwell Theater of the University-Student Union, located on the Cal State L.A. campus.

The lecture celebrates the recent publication of Racism, Sexism, and The Media: The Rise of Class Communication in Multicultural America, a re-edited and expanded version of the classic media studies textbook, Race, Multiculturalism, and the Media: From Mass to Class Communication, by re-uniting its distinguished authors for a discussion that elaborates and expands upon their earlier work.

The new edition addresses the ways people of color fit into the fabric of America and how the media tell them and others how they fit. Its new coauthor, Lena M. Chao, an associate professor of communication studies at Cal State L.A., provided insight into the media experiences of women of color, and the media’s representation of Asian Pacific Americans. The former public service coordinator for KFWB news radio in Los Angeles insisted that the issues of race and representation remain as urgent as ever.

“Even in the new millennium, people of color and women are woefully underrepresented, misrepresented, stereotyped, objectified, and tokenized by the media,” Chao said. “It is imperative that we continue to diversify the news and entertainment media, both in front of and behind the cameras, in order to achieve more fair, balanced, and accurate portrayals of all people of color.”

The lecture will also feature Chao’s coauthors: Felix Gutierrez (1965 CSULA alumnus), currently a visiting professor of journalism at the Annenberg School for Communication at USC, and former senior vice president for the Freedom Forum and Newseum in Arlington, VA, and Clint C. Wilson II (1968 CSULA alumnus), professor of journalism at Howard University, who has written widely on the Black press and minority media audiences in the United States.

The lecture and book signing are cosponsored by CSULA’s Cross Cultural Centers and the American Communities Program—the only research program in the CSU system established to study the ways in which recent and past immigrants construct American cultural identities, and how they are changing American culture in the process of adapting to it.

For more details about the American Communities Program at Cal State L.A., contact the program’s director, Victor Valle, at (323) 343-6300 or e-mail vvalle2@calstatela.edu. For further information on the event, call the Cross Cultural Centers at (323) 343-5001.

WORKING FOR CALIFORNIA – California State University, Los Angeles: A comprehensive university at the heart of a major metropolitan city. The 175-acre hilltop campus is located five miles east of Los Angeles’ civic and cultural center. Since 1947, Cal State L.A. has been a leader in providing quality higher education. Today, the campus comprises a faculty of internationally recognized scholars and artists, and more than 21,000 students with a wide variety of interests, ages and backgrounds that reflect the city’s dynamic mix of populations. Cal State L.A. is one of 23 campuses in the CSU system.