Susana Morris
Susana Morris is co-founder of and contributing writer for the popular feminist blog, The Crunk Feminist Collective. Morris co-edited the anthology The Crunk Feminist Collection, along co- Brittney Cooper and Robin Boylorn. Morris’ work has been featured in Gawker, Cosmopolitan.com, Ebony.com, and Longreads, among other venues. She has also appeared on NPR and HuffPost Live, and has been featured in Colorlines and Essence magazine. She teaches at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
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Talks
Black to the Future: Rejecting Anti-Blackness in our Work
When actor Amandla Stenberg went viral for asking audiences not to “cash crop on my cornrows,” Stenberg was calling out a culture that loves Blackness when it isn’t connected to Black bodies. This presentation uses Afrofuturism and intersectional feminism to chart a course of envisioning a future without anti-Blackness at the center.
Creation over Critique: Cultivating Joy and Resistance
It is hard not to be outraged in social justice circles. But the constant need to clapback, call out, and criticize can leave us burned out, depleted, depressed, and angry. This presentation offer up a range of creative, practical solutions to cultivating joy and resistance in the face of what seems like unrelenting bad news.
Digital Media Activism/Digital Feminisms
As the co-founder of the feminist blog, The Crunk Feminist Collective, a pop culture critic, and as a scholar of digital media, Morris has years of experience creating and analyzing digital media and digital feminist communities. In this presentation, she outlines the practical steps it takes to create and maintain a social justice-oriented media platform and how to navigate the choppy (and often problematic) waters of the online content creation.
Intersectionality and Campus Culture
College is a place of exploration and discovery. However, too often timeworn traditions, campus politics, and conservative backlash to progressive change can make college campus hostile at best and downright unsafe at worst. This presentation explains why it is important for students, faculty, and staff to take an intersectional approach to campus organizing and leadership building and how to take concrete steps in creating change.
Young Adulting
Young adult literature is a booming industry with a goal to get teen readers buying and reading their work. In this presentation, Morris builds on her previous experience consulting with educators and librarians and outlines how to connect young people’s experience with the wildly popular field of young adult literature and how that can spark progressive social and political engagement in their communities.
Other topics may also be available on request!
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Testimonials
“I had the pleasure of working with Susana as we planned our yearly diversity institute. Susana is a skillful presenter as she was able to capture the attention and participation of a diverse audience of students, staff, faculty, and community members with varying knowledge of social justice and diversity issues. Her openness, honesty, passion and commitment to bringing about and sustaining positive changes provided attendees with a living model of using resistance in a creative and joyful manner. Thank you, Susana!”
- Marcie Lazzari, Founding Member, South Puget Sound Higher Education Diversity Partnership
“It was a pleasure to have Susana as a speaker for the Black & Brown Futures conference. She really connected with our university community by taking complex ideas and making them understandable and relatable to our students and the San Antonio community members in attendance. Dr. Morris also pushed attendees to recognize the power and complexity of Pop Culture and the benefits of tapping its potential for social change. Her professionalism, enthusiasm, and kindness make her a go to speaker in the Pop Culture & Speculative Studies academic community.”
- Kinitra D. Brooks, Audrey and John Leslie Endowed Chair in Literary Studies at Michigan State University
Selected Past Talks
- “The Great American Read.” Georgia Public Broadcasting and the Atlanta History Center
- “Game Changers: Women Activists in Digital Space.” Peabody-Essex Museum
- “Creation over Critique: Black Joy and Black Resistance,” South Puget Sound Higher Education Diversity Institute
- “Electrik Revival: Remixing the Black Speculative South.” Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University
- “Black Brilliance, Black Joy.” Harvard Law School
- “Digital Black Feminism.” Digital Blackness Conference. Rutgers University
- “Towards the Black Interior: Afrofuturism as Resistance.” Clark University
- “The End of the World As We Know It: Black Women, Afrofuturism, and Feminism.” The University of Georgia
- “New Media Activism.” Symposium, Institute for Research on Women and Gender, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
- “‘Gods and Monsters: Black Women, Afrofuturism, and Feminism,’ Women’s History Month Guest Lecturer
- “Futuristic Fiction: Women in Science and Science Fiction” Series. University of Texas-Arlington
- “Do Toni Morrison's Papers Belong At Princeton Or Howard?” HuffPost Live
- “Does 'Era Of The Big Booty' Really Mean 'Era Of White Cultural Appropriation'?” HuffPost Live
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