Black Horror Podcasting Research Project
Black Horror Podcast Interview Research
Within the twenty-first century, the popularity and recognition of Black Horror has increased exponentially. However, Black audiences and fan communities, especially those with multiple marginalized identities, are still ignored or overlooked in fan studies. Blerd is an identity that aims to express the intersectional relationship one has with their racial identity, Black, and pleasure through engagement with “nerdy” topics and fandoms spanning from cosplay, video games, fantasy/sci-fi genres, and horror. This paper aims to explore Blerd as an identity, a way of engagement with the horror fandom, and a means of forming a community. Inspired by an ongoing interview-based research project focusing on Black horror podcasters, we aim to illuminate Blerds’ relationships with horror outside as a community often underexplored or overlooked in both horror and fan studies.
This project is supported by UMich Library Mini-Grant. Recently this project was presented at the 2023 Pre-ICA Podcasting Studies, 2023 Emerging Research in Podcast Studies, and 2024 Critical Approaches to Black Media Culture. This research around Blerd identity and Black horror podcasting will be featured in a forthcoming book chapter on horror fandom!
Archiving Blaxploitation Horror Radio
With the increase in horror podcasting, especially among marginalized communities, it is imperative to evaluate how podcasting affords podcast hosts and listeners their desired horror content engagement that other mediums, like radio, have not been able to provide in the past. Furthermore, podcast studies often are associated with radio studies but there is little to no examination of how Black horror exists, is negotiated, and is present in radio archives. This project aims to evaluate how Black horror is positioned in radio archives. RQs: What is the historical and cultural context around Black Horror podcasting and radio? How is Black Podcasting grounded in radio? To what extent has Blaxploitation's horror film era informed or is represented in Black radio?
This project was presented at the 2024 Society of Cinema and Media Studies and supported by UMich Library Mini-Grant.
