Citing debates on essentialisation of blackness, this article assesses how—if at all—Black Panther projects black female empowerment.
Thabani Mpofu
Thabani Mpofu is a media and communications specialist with experience in multi-media content production, training, mentorship, research, monitoring, and management. He has more than 12 years’ experience in media practice and management, rising from an intern at The Zimbabwe Independent private newspaper, to sub-editor, chief-sub-editor and assistant editor at the weekly Sunday News newspaper and Managing Editor of the Daily Chronicle. In 2010, Thabani worked for Gender Links, a Non-Governmental Organisation based in South Africa, as the Gender and Media Programme Manager. Since then, he has done consultancy work for various local, regional, and international agencies including UN Zimbabwe, National Aids Council of Zimbabwe, Cultural Information Trust, and Gender Links, among others. He has served as lecturer and head of the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST). Currently, he is the Director for Communication and Marketing at NUST, with overall responsibility for managing the University communications, stakeholder engagement, brand and image management. His research interest are gender and media, media, development and democracy, climate change communication, and health communication. Thabani holds a Master of Science Degree in Journalism and Media Studies (NUST), a Postgraduate Diploma in Media and Communication Studies (UZ) and a Bachelor of Arts General Degree (UZ).
WHO SUPPORTS US
The team of MAI supporters and contributors is always expanding. We’re honoured to have a specialist collective of editors, whose enthusiasm & talent gave birth to MAI.
However, to turn our MAI dream into reality, we also relied on assistance from high-quality experts in web design, development and photography. Here we’d like to acknowledge their hard work and commitment to the feminist cause. Our feminist ‘thank you’ goes to:
Dots+Circles – a digital agency determined to make a difference, who’ve designed and built our MAI website. Their continuous support became a digital catalyst to our idealistic project.
Guy Martin – an award-winning and widely published British photographer who’s kindly agreed to share his images with our readers
Chandler Jernigan – a talented young American photographer whose portraits hugely enriched the visuals of MAI website
Matt Gillespie – a gifted professional British photographer who with no hesitation gave us permission to use some of his work
Julia Carbonell – an emerging Spanish photographer whose sharp outlook at contemporary women grasped our feminist attention
Ana Pedreira – a self-taught Portuguese photographer whose imagery from women protests beams with feminist aura
And other photographers whose images have been reproduced here: Cezanne Ali, Les Anderson, Mike Wilson, Annie Spratt, Cristian Newman, Peter Hershey