“Black Lives Matter” is not just a phrase or way of thinking as it relates to police brutality and racist violence towards Black life, but also necessary in the fantasy and gaming realm. Much like any other art form or popular medium, the world of gaming and fantasy must be open to having a talk about its history of racial and cultural insensitivity, regardless of the pushback.

Grace D. Gipson, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the department of African American Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond, VA). As a Black future feminist/pop culture scholar, Dr. Gipson’s area of research interest centers on black popular culture, digital humanities, representations of race and gender within comic books, Afrofuturism, and race and new media.

Grace’s work has been featured in various publications and book chapters in such outlets as Huffington Post, NPR.org and Black Perspectives. Her current book project seeks to explore Black female identities as personified in comics and fandom culture. A second project examines how online Black female academic and popular networks produce cultural and technical capital, which act as safe spaces that showcase, interrogate, and celebrate the blending of popular culture and the academy.

Outside the classroom, you can find Grace collecting comic books and stamps on her international travel discoveries, participating as part of the #BlackComicsChat podcast crew and giving back to the community through a myriad of projects and organizations. You can also follow her on Twitter @GBreezy20.