Talk :
Dancehall’s Rebel Women: Curating Afro-Caribbean Freedoms via Popular Culture

Using a case study approach, this presentation discusses Jamaica’s dancehall culture as a site for feminist empowerment and liberation.

Donna P. Hope

Biography :

Donna P. Hope, PhD is tenured Professor of Culture, Gender and Society, Institute of Caribbean Studies, and former Deputy Dean of Graduate Studies and Research in the Faculty of Humanities and Education, University of the West Indies, Mona.  A specialist in the areas of popular culture, identity, gender, and media, her work engages Afro-Jamaican/Caribbean cultures of identity-making as they intersect with power domains.
A former Director of the ICS, she was Program Chair of the inaugural Global Reggae Conference (2008), and organized and chaired three International Reggae Conferences, (2010, 2013, 2015). Professor Hope is a renowned speaker and media commentator on popular culture, gender, culture, music, politics, and related areas, and has published extensively in both academic and popular circles.

The holder of a in B.A. in Mass Communication (UWI, Mona, First Class Hons.) and a Masters of Philosophy in Political Science (UWI, Mona) she was a Fulbright Scholar to the USA where she completed her PhD in Cultural Studies; and was named the 2017 Distinguished Alumna in Cultural Studies, at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, at George Mason University in Virginia, USA.
A keen cultural activist with a deep interest in black, working class culture, and a researcher with a strong ethnographic focus, Professor Hope is the founder of The Dancehall Archive and Research Initiative (www.dancehallarcive.org) which preserves, innovates and disseminates information about dancehall culture.