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Jordan Peele’s critically acclaimed directorial debut Get Out (2017) highlights the issues regarding racism and Black identity that have seldom been the subject of horror film. More specifically, Get Out offers representations of Black masculinity that push against the stereotypical and reductive ways that Black men have often been depicted in horror cinema. The portrayal of Black men in Get Out takes shape in ways influenced by a range of relationships featured in the film. Amongst these is the dynamic between the leading character Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and his white girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams), in addition to Chris’s interactions with Rose’s mother Missy (Catherine Keener), as well as his best friend Rod (Lil Rel Howery). As such, scrutiny of Get Out yields insight into the construction of Black masculinity in horror film, including how on-screen inter- and intra-racial relations are implicated in this. The writing that follows focuses on how Get Out offers complex and scarcely featured representations of Black masculinity, and boyhood, in horror. As part of such discussion, there is analysis of the entanglements of on-screen gender and racial politics, which contribute to the nuances of depictions of Black masculinity in Get Out.

In this chapter, I discuss the development of the cannibal picking up from Jennifer Brown’s (2013) study, Cannibalism in Literature and Film. Brown (2013, p. 7) argued that the cannibal is a sign of ultimate difference who ‘reappears in various guises at times when popular culture needs to express real fears and anxieties’. I argue that the most recent version of the cannibal is gendered female and that this coincides with a postfeminist media culture. I explore how the cannibal is positioned as an ambiguous figure which questions both humanity and monstrosity. I argue that this is complicated by gendering it female as women have traditionally straddled the line between human and less-than human in popular culture. I discuss three films: 301/302 (Park, 1995), The Woman (Torino, Van Den Houten, & McKee, 2011) and Raw (De Forêts & Ducournau, 2016) and explore how they use incest, objectification and dehumanization as well as cannibalism to explore the ambiguities of postfeminist subjecthood. I will argue that by performing acts of cannibalism the female cannibals in these films reclaim their subjectivity both by objectifying others and by identifying with their victims. The cannibalism also presents the opportunity for female-oriented families through shared consumption which ironically embraces patriarchal ideals of feminine feeding roles and challenges the patriarchal basis of the family.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze ethical issues and current trends of major college athletics in relationship to Black males in society. The focus of this chapter is on identity and how higher education institutions can cultivate a more balanced student-athlete mindset through images and representations. In addition to a review of relevant literature, a content analysis of six State Farm Insurance Cliff and Chris Paul commercials was conducted so that new knowledge is applied to the constructs of academic and athletic identity. Commercial and advertisement content analysis was utilized to address student-athlete life skills issues in terms of transferable attributes from sport to life. College athletics programs need to develop systemic and culturally relevant strategies that enable Black males to transfer skill sets developed through participation in intercollegiate athletics to future occupational endeavors. The chapter concludes with a recommendation section for education research, practice, and policy.

Purpose – Utilizing the intersectionality framework, this study examines how a racially diverse group of adults aim to balance work–family life.Methodology/approach – This chapter uses qualitative data from the Intersections of Family, Work, and Health Study consisting of 132 black, white, and Mexican-American adults.Findings – We find that socioeconomic status and marriage provide social and economic capital to more easily fulfill role obligations. Individuals with more capital have more choices and are offered a chess board and a variety of pieces to facilitate the goal of creating work–family harmony. Individuals with less capital end up with less job flexibility and play checkers through rigid concrete roles because work decisions are in the hands of their employers instead of their own.Social implications – This chapter sheds light on the influence of high social status and the ability some individuals have to maximize both job flexibility and autonomy in managing work–family life. As we show here, married middle-class whites are able to manage work–family life better than professional black single mothers and working class Mexican Americans by having the ability to choose to play checkers or chess.Originality/value of chapter – We argue that the concept of “balancing” does little to express the ways individuals negotiate the constraints of work and family. By using an intersectionality perspective, we show that conceptualizing work–family life as “checkers or chess” games allow for the cognitive process of decision making (in terms of, for example, time pressures and perceived role demands) to be assessed more efficiently across work–family domains.

Drawing on interviews with men and women gun carriers, this paper considers the intersection of femininity and guns. It argues that two sets of expectations shape the normative relationship between women and guns: First, armed women are a blind spot in feminist discourse, which tends to reproduce the “pacifist presumption” that women are nonviolent caretakers and peacemakers. Second, contemporary pro-gun discourse often bases women’s gun carry within their duties and obligations as mothers in a form of “martial maternalism.” Inflected with a post-feminist appropriation of rights and equality, this pro-gun discourse reproduces gender binaries through a discourse of gender inclusivity. Following previous analyses that emphasize the contradictory politics of gender in conservative spaces, my analysis emphasizes how the gendered politics of guns is sustained by multiple, though not necessarily shared, understandings of women’s guns by men and women within American gun culture.