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To many men and women of color, as well as many white women, meaningful diversity occurs when the actual presence of different-looking bodies appears on screen. For them, this diversity serves as an indicator of progress as well as an aspirational frame for younger generations who are told that the visual signifiers they can identify with carry a great amount of symbolic weight. As a consequence, the degree of diversity became synonymous with the quantity of difference rather than with the dimensionality of those performances. Moreover, a paradoxical condition emerges whereby people of color have become more media savvy yet are still, if not more, reliant on overdetermined and overly reductive notions of so-called “positive” and “negative” representation. Such measures yield a set of dueling consequences: first, that any representation that includes a person of color is automatically a sign of success and progress; second, that such paltry gains generate an easy workaround for the executive suites whereby hiring racially diverse actors becomes an easy substitute for developing new complex characters. The results of such choices can feel—in an affective sense—artificial, or more to the point, like plastic. Black representation, as it's been understood in a popular sense, has been dominated by the circulation of mediated imagery yielding deleterious effects for the groups depicted. The fear of the effects of such “poor” representation has resulted in a set of binary, nonscientific, underdeveloped metrics—positive and negative—that constitute a nebulous catch-all system wherein the characteristics that define each pole on the spectrum shift depending on the era and the expectations of the audience. What marks a representation as “positive” or “negative”? Responses are often aligned with class (good job, education, community minded), behavior (hypersexual, well-spoken, “woke”), or with characterizations of character that either successfully assimilate into normative culture or fail to do so. However, such a scale oversimplifies the complexities of black identity that require audiences, pop culture critics, and scholars to invest in screen characters through experiencing nuances developed over time and ironically reinforces the stereotypes that operate as industry shorthand. The rationale for solely demanding plastic representation is understandable as a sanity-preserving tactic that can also build esteem and confidence, but it is not nearly enough. Meaningful, resonant diversity is a more difficult, underdeveloped approach that requires all stakeholders to think harder about what on-screen difference looks and feels like. But if representation truly matters, then it is an approach worthy of pursuit.

Because cultural products are made \"for everyone,\" film and television provoke inexhaustible popular writings based in interest but not specialization and curiosity but not context, so that such popular criticism presents its ideas as though without an origin or genealogy. [...]objects of study that for film and media studies scholars carry specific meanings, historical contexts, and specificities become the catalysts at best and fodder at worst for whatever can fit into someone's methodological black box. In 2016, I cowrote a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education reminding nonacademic writers on popular culture that, if they decided to delve into deep histories of the film and media studies variety, we specialists in those areas were available to help contextualize and offer citations for reading to enhance and nuance those pieces.1 We stressed how unnecessary it was for writers to assume that their ideas on topics like race and television or reality television or taste cultures and television were original and new. The joy of the panel emerged from all of the differing approaches to understanding the visual album—from analyzing the live performances and its affective ties to Black audiences, to unpacking the formal patterns that marked the visual album as a music video, to a political economy study that complicated Beyoncé as a businesswoman, to a consideration of invisible collaborative labor regarding the album and film.

On the occasion of the Amazon Studios release of Barry Jenkins’s The Underground Railroad, a ten-episode adaption of Colson Whitehead’s 2016 novel, FQ board member and frequent contributor Michael Gillespie convened a roundtable with scholars whose work is deeply attentive to the art of blackness, especially regarding literature, television, and cinema. Walton M. Muyumba, Samantha N. Sheppard, and Kristen J. Warner each offers a distinct assessment of the series as critical provocation and aesthetic practice while also posing necessary and difficult questions about conceptions of history, culture, visuality, narrative form, temporality, and—not least—the media industries. Together, these scholars share their thoughts on the complications and import of the series as part of what is sure to be an ongoing consideration of its meanings and methods.

Michael Boyce Gillespie leads a roundtable with scholars Jonathan W. Gray, Rebecca A. Wanzo, and Kristen Warner to discuss issues of medium, genre, fandom, and African American history in the highly regarded HBO series Watchmen. Characterizing the HBO series as a disobedient adaptation that modifies, extends, and redirects the world making of its source material—the famed twelve-issue comic-book series of the same name, written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons (1986–87)—Gillespie et al. explore the ways in which Watchmen remediates American history, starting with the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 that serves as the historical and ideological trigger that sets the series in motion. In a wide-ranging conversation that encompasses subjects including fan fiction, adaptation, cultural mythology, and black superheroes, the authors argue for Watchmen's significance as some of the most consequential television of the century so far.

Media expansion into the digital realm and the continuing segregation of users into niches has led to a proliferation of cultural products targeted to and consumed by women. Though often dismissed as frivolous or excessively emotional, feminized culture in reality offers compelling insights into the American experience of the early twenty-first century. Elana Levine brings together writings from feminist critics that chart the current terrain of feminized pop cultural production. Analyzing everything from Fifty Shades of Grey to Pinterest to pregnancy apps, contributors examine the economic, technological, representational, and experiential dimensions of products and phenomena that speak to, and about, the feminine. As these essays show, the imperative of productivity currently permeating feminized pop culture has created a generation of texts that speak as much to women's roles as public and private workers as to an impulse for fantasy or escape. Incisive and compelling, Cupcakes, Pinterest, and Ladyporn sheds new light on contemporary women's engagement with an array of media forms in the context of postfeminist culture and neoliberalism.

On November 20, 2013, ABC’s hit prime-time seriesScandalaired “Vermont Is for Lovers Too.” The third season episode sparked a full day of social media fodder ahead of its airing as fans tweeted their excitement about the potential story lines that could unfold. The following day, Black television bloggers like Awesomely Luvvie recapped the episode. Luvvie’s popularity stems from her ability to humorously code-switch linguistically between standard English and African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in her episode summaries as well as through her use of gifs¹ that operate as visual metaphors of her feelings and moods. For example, in

Despite a large proportion of working mothers in the American workforce, research suggests that negative stereotypes and discrimination against working mothers continue to exist. In a set of two experimental studies, the current paper examined subtle discrimination against non-pregnant, working mothers in different hiring settings. In Study 1, using a between-subject field experiment and applying for geographically dispersed jobs with manipulated resumes, we found evidence for subtle discrimination, such that mothers received more negativity in callback messages than women without children, men without children, and fathers. They were also rejected more quickly than women without children and fathers. In Study 2, using a more controlled experimental paradigm, we tested our hypothesis in a hypothetical interview evaluation setting. We found that mothers faced more interpersonal hostility across different job types as compared to women without children. Together, these studies highlight the presence of subtle discrimination against working mothers at different stages of the hiring process.

The development and physiologic role of small intestine (SI) vasculature is poorly studied. This is partly due to a lack of targetable, organ-specific markers for in vivo studies of two critical tissue components: endothelium and stroma. This challenge is exacerbated by limitations of traditional cell culture techniques, which fail to recapitulate mechanobiologic stimuli known to affect vessel development. Here, we construct and characterize a 3D in vitro microfluidic model that supports the growth of patient-derived intestinal subepithelial myofibroblasts (ISEMFs) and endothelial cells (ECs) into perfused capillary networks. We report how ISEMF and EC-derived vasculature responds to physiologic parameters such as oxygen tension, cell density, growth factors, and pharmacotherapy with an antineoplastic agent (Erlotinib). Finally, we demonstrate effects of ISEMF and EC co-culture on patient-derived human intestinal epithelial cells (HIECs), and incorporate perfused vasculature into a gut-on-a-chip (GOC) model that includes HIECs. Overall, we demonstrate that ISEMFs possess angiogenic properties as evidenced by their ability to reliably, reproducibly, and quantifiably facilitate development of perfused vasculature in a microfluidic system. We furthermore demonstrate the feasibility of including perfused vasculature, including ISEMFs, as critical components of a novel, patient-derived, GOC system with translational relevance as a platform for precision and personalized medicine research.

Background Short bowel syndrome (SBS) results from significant loss of small intestinal length. In response to this loss, adaptation occurs, with Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) being a key driver. Besides enhanced enterocyte proliferation, we have revealed that adaptation is associated with angiogenesis. Further, we have found that small bowel resection (SBR) is associated with diminished oxygen delivery and elevated levels of hypoxia-inducible factor 1-alpha (HIF1α). Methods We ablated EGFR in the epithelium and endothelium as well as HIF1α in the epithelium, ostensibly the most hypoxic element. Using these mice, we determined the effects of these genetic manipulations on intestinal blood flow after SBR using photoacoustic microscopy (PAM), intestinal adaptation and angiogenic responses. Then, given that endothelial cells require a stromal support cell for efficient vascularization, we ablated EGFR expression in intestinal subepithelial myofibroblasts (ISEMFs) to determine its effects on angiogenesis in a microfluidic model of human small intestine. Results Despite immediate increased demand in oxygen extraction fraction measured by PAM in all mouse lines, were no differences in enterocyte and endothelial cell EGFR knockouts or enterocyte HIF1α knockouts by POD3. Submucosal capillary density was also unchanged by POD7 in all mouse lines. Additionally, EGFR silencing in ISEMFs did not impact vascular network development in a microfluidic device of human small intestine. Conclusions Overall, despite the importance of EGFR in facilitating intestinal adaptation after SBR, it had no impact on angiogenesis in three cell types–enterocytes, endothelial cells, and ISEMFs. Epithelial ablation of HIF1α also had no impact on angiogenesis in the setting of SBS.