Of Brown Girls and Brujos: The Value of Intersectionalality in Networked Television

Dr. Aymar Jean Christian is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University and the founder of Open TV (Beta), a web platform for queer indie artists of color. Open TV's mission states, "television must be open to diverse identities and their experiences, so we are committed to developing work from artists most often left out of commercial production: queer, trans, and cis-women and people of color." In its first cycle of programming, OpenTV released 9.5 hours of original programming, including six original series, both narrative and documentary.

Open TV and its series have been funded by both The Chicago Digital Media Production Fund (CDMPF) and The Propeller Fund as well as a grant from the Sexualities Project at Northwestern (SPAN). Series creators have also crowdfunded over $12,000 to supplement grants.

Dr. Christian's talk explores preliminary insights he gleaned from producing and exhibiting two queer television series for Open TV (Beta): Brown Girls by Fatimah Asghar and Sam Bailey and Brujos by Ricardo Gamboa and Reshmi Hazra Rustebakke. The production and release of Brown Girls and Brujos reveals how sincerely representing intersectional identities creates value in local and online community-building, sustained discourse about production and representation, and advancing artistry in networked television.