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We are sorry to announce this lecture has been cancelled, along with all lectures featured in the ISU Lectures Program. We will reschedule this event in the fall.

This lecture will discuss Jordan Peele’s horror thriller “Get Out,” demonstrating the ways in which the director employs traditional filmmaking storytelling tropes to examine contemporary racial politics. Peele uses the cinema as a tool for social activism, working to help create a future in which citizens will potentially be more informed about, attuned to, and concerned with fighting against systemic racism.

Lawrence’s research primarily centers on African American cinematic and mediated experiences and popular culture. He is the author of “Blaxploitation Films of the 1970s: Blackness and Genre,” the editor of “Documenting the Black Experience,” and the co-editor of “Beyond Blaxploitation.” He has also published journal articles and book chapters on the comedy of Dave Chappelle; the films “Black Dynamite” and “C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America;” and about African American religious iconography in the television series “Good Times.” His current research project, a co-authored book on Oscar and British Academy of Film and Television Awards (BAFTA)-winning screenwriter and director Kevin Willmott, will be published by Wayne State University Press in 2021.

Lawrence earned his Ph.D. in 2004 from the Theatre and Film Department (now Department of Cinema and Media Studies) at the University of Kansas. Before joining Iowa State, he was an associate professor in the Radio, Television and Digital Media Department at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale where he taught courses such as Media and Society, Film History and Analysis, Race and the Media and History of African American Images in Film.