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Transnational Media Articulations of Ghanaian Women: Mapping Shifting Returnee Identities in an Online Web Series

Azanu, Benedine
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0602-5711
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1490962935074027

Abstract Details

2017, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, Mass Communication (Communication).
This study examines returnee African women’s identity articulations in the web series An African City. Specifically, the research focuses on the appropriation of a U.S. popular cultural text perceived as more powerful by a Ghanaian producer in the creation of counter-discourses, cultural spaces, and identities in alternative media. Using multi-theoretical lenses – a framework of in-betweeness - the study is grounded in the theory of articulation to examine how the web series An African City uses Sex And The City in response to Western monolithic representations of African women. A social constructivist framework that considers identities as shifting subjectivities are interrogated through the theoretical lenses of transnational postcolonial feminism, using a framework of in-betweeness informed by hybridity and conviviality as intempestivity. The study makes theoretical links to transnational postcolonial feminisms, invoked by specific intersections of returnee African women. Using articulation analyses, thematic links are made between the series and in-depth interview with the series producer and focus group interviews with African women in Ghana and American diaspora. The argument is made that a continuum of `outsidenes’ and `insideness’ informs any system of identity and belongingness where identities shift ever so often. It is further argued that while An African City web series represents one of many re-configured identity formations embedded within Eurocentric African women’s identities that conform to globalizing homogenization of capitalist cultural productions, the series creates and occupies a space of conviviality that engenders dissensus in the distribution of Ghanaian women’s representation in particular and Black women in general. Examining diasporan African women identity articulations is important particularly when African women use media technologies to represent themselves in alternative media spaces in a bid to enrich research on stereotypical portrayals of African women. Also, the tendency to focus on more “serious” non-fiction genres like news, to the detriment of those genres considered fictional and often taken for granted by their entertainment value, warrants such a research.
Steve Howard (Committee Chair)
Jenny Nelson (Committee Member)
Raymie McKerrow (Committee Member)
Edna Wangui (Committee Member)
230 p.
Aesthetics; African Studies; Film Studies; Gender Studies; Mass Communications; Sub Saharan Africa Studies; Womens Studies
Returnees; African women; identity articulation; web series; gender and media; in-betweeness as a framework; transnational feminism; Ghana

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Azanu, B. (2017). Transnational Media Articulations of Ghanaian Women: Mapping Shifting Returnee Identities in an Online Web Series [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1490962935074027

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Azanu, Benedine. Transnational Media Articulations of Ghanaian Women: Mapping Shifting Returnee Identities in an Online Web Series. 2017. Ohio University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1490962935074027.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Azanu, Benedine. "Transnational Media Articulations of Ghanaian Women: Mapping Shifting Returnee Identities in an Online Web Series." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1490962935074027

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ohiou1490962935074027
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© 2017, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Ohio University and OhioLINK.