“The Futility of Identity: Reflections of Class in Cultural Appropriation and Assimilation” presented at the Honors Research Symposium for Religious Studies at The University of Alabama in February 2019. Advised by Dr. Merinda Simmons, this presentation complicated the ownership of “identity” by analyzing claims of cultural appropriation through the lenses of race and class. Specific cultural examples discussed included Kendrick Lamar’s 2018 Music Midtown performance and Chinese American immigrant assimilation into US culture in the late nineteenth century.
For more information about the 2019 symposium: https://religion.ua.edu/blog/2019/03/08/symposium-recap/
