Upcoming Presentations and Public Lectures
'A Marvel to Behold or For-Profit Pandering? Disney’s Embrace of Indigenous Recognition, Resistance, and Survivance', 15th Popular Culture and World Politics Conference (PCWP v15), 19-22 November 2024, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
My paper assesses the centre of gravity of popular culture at the global scale (with a critical eye toward world politics) by twinning the question of ‘Whose popular culture?’ with a second query: ‘Popular culture for whom?’ The Walt Disney Company is the world’s leading global culture machine, and one that is now grafting its century-old ‘imagineering’ practices onto a growing suite of other world-building franchises, such as the Star Wars universe, and world-revealing platforms, like National Geographic. Focusing on three recent artefacts of Disney’s marquis property Marvel – Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), What If...Kahhori Reshaped the World? (2023), and Echo (2024) – I interrogate Disney’s turn in its representational practice with regards to Indigenous recognition, resistance, and survivance in the face of Western imperialism, settler colonialism, and cultural genocide. Drawing on my previous work on Disney-MCU’s appropriation of human suffering for financial profit, I focus on the ways in which these visions of Indigenous power, pride, and perseverance speak to shifting priorities for multinational content-production conglomerates. Seeking profit in burgeoning markets in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and East Asia, ‘Hollywood’ has throatily embraced anti-imperial narratives to fill its coffers with Disney leading the way. I problematise this dynamic by examining the recursive guilt-mitigation inherent in such seemingly prosocial imaginaries by reflecting on Disney’s dependable reinforcing of its neoliberal value proposition for the world, but one that never advocates a genuine re-balancing of power dynamics between the Global North, a Global South populated by people of colour (POCs), and those remaining Indigenous communities that all share a single home: Planet Earth.
My paper assesses the centre of gravity of popular culture at the global scale (with a critical eye toward world politics) by twinning the question of ‘Whose popular culture?’ with a second query: ‘Popular culture for whom?’ The Walt Disney Company is the world’s leading global culture machine, and one that is now grafting its century-old ‘imagineering’ practices onto a growing suite of other world-building franchises, such as the Star Wars universe, and world-revealing platforms, like National Geographic. Focusing on three recent artefacts of Disney’s marquis property Marvel – Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), What If...Kahhori Reshaped the World? (2023), and Echo (2024) – I interrogate Disney’s turn in its representational practice with regards to Indigenous recognition, resistance, and survivance in the face of Western imperialism, settler colonialism, and cultural genocide. Drawing on my previous work on Disney-MCU’s appropriation of human suffering for financial profit, I focus on the ways in which these visions of Indigenous power, pride, and perseverance speak to shifting priorities for multinational content-production conglomerates. Seeking profit in burgeoning markets in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and East Asia, ‘Hollywood’ has throatily embraced anti-imperial narratives to fill its coffers with Disney leading the way. I problematise this dynamic by examining the recursive guilt-mitigation inherent in such seemingly prosocial imaginaries by reflecting on Disney’s dependable reinforcing of its neoliberal value proposition for the world, but one that never advocates a genuine re-balancing of power dynamics between the Global North, a Global South populated by people of colour (POCs), and those remaining Indigenous communities that all share a single home: Planet Earth.
Past Events
'"Do You See What I See?" Visions of the Anthropocene in Serial TV Drama', European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS), WS31: Popular Culture and the End of the World: Imagining Dystopia and Utopia in the Anthropocene Epoch at Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Türkiye (5 July 2024)
'"Obey": Navigating the Incepted Inheritance of 1980s Pop-Culture in the Era of Trumpism', British International Studies Association Conference, Birmingham, UK (5 June 2024)
Roundtable (Chair): Charting the Future of PCWP Scholarship beyond the Tübingen School, British International Studies Association Conference, Birmingham, UK (5 June 2024)
'Terra Nullius No More! Finland in Geopolitical Imagination after NATO', hosted by the Global Politics and Practice Research Group at Central European University, Vienna, Austria (21 November 2023)
'Black + Brown ≠ Green: The Absent Presence of the Anthropocene in Wakanda Forever', Popular Culture and World Politics v14: Shaping a Broken World at Central European University, Vienna, Austria (17 November 2023)
'Posthuman Geopolitical Culture(s): Decentring the State in the Anthropocene Epoch' at the British International Studies Association (BISA) conference, Hilton Glasgow, UK (23 June 2023)
'Blinding Visions of the Anthropocene: Thinking and Feeling the New Human Epoch While Watching See ', Televisual Landscapes in the Era of Climate Crises at the ECREA 9th European Communication Conference, Aarhus University, Denmark (21 October 2022)
'A See Change? Observations on the (Visual) Politics of Screening the Anthropocene ', Surviving the Human Epoch: Popular Culture and the (Geo)Politics of the Anthropocene at the British International Studies Association (BISA) conference, Newcastle University, UK (16 June 2022)
'Geographical Imagination, Genealogy, and Geopolitics in Who Do You Think You Are? ' at the (Em)placing the Popular in Cultural Geography workshop at Coventry University, UK (12 January 2022)
'(Be)longing to/for the Past: Negotiations of Time, Space, and Identity in Beforeigners ', In/between Spaces of Power - SF Geographies of Bodies in Troubled Times at the Swiss Geoscience Meeting (SGM), University of Geneva, Switzerland (20 November 2021)
'A Broken World (Politics): Dark Visions of American Foreign Policy in the Late Anthropocene ', Performing Anthropo(s)cenes: Politics of/with(in) Popular Culture section at European International Studies Association's 14th Pan-European Conference on International Relations, 'Power Politics of Nature', in Msida, Malta (14 September 2021)
'IR in Ruins: Imagining Global Power in the Coming Apocalypse', Cosmologies of the End workshop at the 7th European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS), University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece (2 July 2021)
'A Critical Analysis of the Political Geographies of Black Panther', invited keynote at Headington College and Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability workshop, University of Oklahoma (March 26, 2019)
'Extending the Katechon: Religio-Civilizational Vectors in Russia’s Intervention in the Levant', Striking from the Margins Conference: State, Disintegration and Devolution of Authority in the Arab Middle East , American University of Beirut, Lebanon (January 17, 2019)
'Who Gets to Imagine the Community in Cyberspace? A Reflection on the Past(s), Present, and Future(s) of Digital Nationalism' at the Nations in Cyberspace conference, hosted by the Nationalism Studies Program, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary (June 28, 2018)
'#Geopolitics: Diplomacy in the Age of Twitter', School of International Relations at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia (April 27, 2018)
'"Obey": Navigating the Incepted Inheritance of 1980s Pop-Culture in the Era of Trumpism', British International Studies Association Conference, Birmingham, UK (5 June 2024)
Roundtable (Chair): Charting the Future of PCWP Scholarship beyond the Tübingen School, British International Studies Association Conference, Birmingham, UK (5 June 2024)
'Terra Nullius No More! Finland in Geopolitical Imagination after NATO', hosted by the Global Politics and Practice Research Group at Central European University, Vienna, Austria (21 November 2023)
'Black + Brown ≠ Green: The Absent Presence of the Anthropocene in Wakanda Forever', Popular Culture and World Politics v14: Shaping a Broken World at Central European University, Vienna, Austria (17 November 2023)
'Posthuman Geopolitical Culture(s): Decentring the State in the Anthropocene Epoch' at the British International Studies Association (BISA) conference, Hilton Glasgow, UK (23 June 2023)
'Blinding Visions of the Anthropocene: Thinking and Feeling the New Human Epoch While Watching See ', Televisual Landscapes in the Era of Climate Crises at the ECREA 9th European Communication Conference, Aarhus University, Denmark (21 October 2022)
'A See Change? Observations on the (Visual) Politics of Screening the Anthropocene ', Surviving the Human Epoch: Popular Culture and the (Geo)Politics of the Anthropocene at the British International Studies Association (BISA) conference, Newcastle University, UK (16 June 2022)
'Geographical Imagination, Genealogy, and Geopolitics in Who Do You Think You Are? ' at the (Em)placing the Popular in Cultural Geography workshop at Coventry University, UK (12 January 2022)
'(Be)longing to/for the Past: Negotiations of Time, Space, and Identity in Beforeigners ', In/between Spaces of Power - SF Geographies of Bodies in Troubled Times at the Swiss Geoscience Meeting (SGM), University of Geneva, Switzerland (20 November 2021)
'A Broken World (Politics): Dark Visions of American Foreign Policy in the Late Anthropocene ', Performing Anthropo(s)cenes: Politics of/with(in) Popular Culture section at European International Studies Association's 14th Pan-European Conference on International Relations, 'Power Politics of Nature', in Msida, Malta (14 September 2021)
'IR in Ruins: Imagining Global Power in the Coming Apocalypse', Cosmologies of the End workshop at the 7th European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS), University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece (2 July 2021)
'A Critical Analysis of the Political Geographies of Black Panther', invited keynote at Headington College and Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability workshop, University of Oklahoma (March 26, 2019)
'Extending the Katechon: Religio-Civilizational Vectors in Russia’s Intervention in the Levant', Striking from the Margins Conference: State, Disintegration and Devolution of Authority in the Arab Middle East , American University of Beirut, Lebanon (January 17, 2019)
'Who Gets to Imagine the Community in Cyberspace? A Reflection on the Past(s), Present, and Future(s) of Digital Nationalism' at the Nations in Cyberspace conference, hosted by the Nationalism Studies Program, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary (June 28, 2018)
'#Geopolitics: Diplomacy in the Age of Twitter', School of International Relations at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia (April 27, 2018)