Introduction

In this episode Diane Negra reads from the Introduction of Old and New Media after Katrina published by Palgrave Macmillan. This pioneering collection explores the relationship between Hurricane Katrina and a range of media forms, assessing how mainstream and independent media have responded sometimes innovatively, sometimes conservatively to the political and social ruptures “Katrina” has come to represent. 

Looking closely at the organization of public memory of Katrina, this collection provides a timely and intellectually fruitful assessment of the complex ways in which media forms and national events are currently entangled.The contributors explore how Hurricane Katrina is positioned at the intersection of numerous early twenty-first century crisis narratives centralizing uncertainties about race, class, region, government and public safety.

Diane Negra

Diane Negra is Professor of Film Studies and Screen Culture and Head of Film Studies at University College Dublin. She is the author, editor or co-editor of five books: Off-White Hollywood: American Culture and Ethnic Female Stardom(Routledge, 2001), A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema (Duke, 2002), The Irish in Us: Irishness, Performativity and Popular Culture (Duke, 2006), Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture (Duke, 2007) and What a Girl Wants?: Fantasizing the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism(Routledge, 2008).