F R E E A C C E S S
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Jean Kilbourne is internationally recognized for her groundbreaking work on the image of women in advertising and for her critical studies of alcohol and tobacco advertising. In the late 1960s she began her exploration of the connection between advertising and several public health issues, including violence against women, eating disorders, and addiction, and launched a movement to promote media literacy as a way to prevent these problems. A radical and original idea at the time, this approach is now mainstream and an integral part of most prevention programs.
Known for her wit and warmth, she has been described as a "superstar lecturer" by the Boston Globe and named by The New York Times Magazine as one of the three most popular speakers on college campuses. Her film "Killing Us Softly: Advertising's Image of Women" is among the most popular educational films of all time. She is the author of the award-winning book Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel and So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids.
She holds an honorary position at the Wellesley Centers for Women. In 2015 she received an Alumnae Achievement Award, Wellesley College’s highest honor, and was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. A more unusual tribute was paid when an all-female rock group in Canada named itself Kilbourne in her honor.
SUSAN J. DOUGLAS
Susan J. Douglas is the Catherine Neafie Kellogg Professor and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Communication Studies, and former department chair, at The University of Michigan. Her new book, In Our Prime: How Older Women are Reinventing the Road Ahead is forthcoming in March 2020 from Norton. She is author of several books, including The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture Took us from Girl Power to Girls Gone Wild, The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How it Undermines Women, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination, which won the Hacker Prize in 2000 for the best popular book about technology and culture, and Where The Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media.
JENNIFER L. POZNER
Jennifer L. Pozner is a media critic, media literacy educator, and author of Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV and the forthcoming graphic novel Breaking (the) News, which will explore media literacy through a gender and racial justice lens. She was founding director of Women In Media & News. Her work has been published in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, The Nation, Bitch, Ms., and In These Times, among other outlets and anthologies. Previously, she directed the Women’s Desk at Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, where she wrote for Extra! magazine and contributed to CounterSpin radio and was a Media Watch columnist for Sojourner: The Women’s Forum.
JAMIA WILSON
Jamia Wilson is an activist, feminist leader, writer, and speaker. As director of the Feminist Press at the City University of New York and the former VP of programs at the Women’s Media Center, Jamia has been a leading voice on women’s rights issues for over a decade. Her work has appeared in numerous outlets, including the New York Times, the Today Show, CNN, Elle, BBC, Rookie, Refinery 29, Glamour, and The Washington Post. She is the author of Young, Gifted, and Black, the introduction and oral history in Together We Rise: Behind the Scenes at the Protest Heard Around the World, and Step Into Your Power: 23 Lessons on How to Live Your Best Life.
ELENA ROSSINI
Elena Rossini is an Italian film director, producer, editor and public speaker. Her most notable film, The Illusionists, a feature-length documentary about consumer culture and the marketing of unattainable beauty ideals around the world has been shown at dozens of schools, colleges, and universities, and in corporate settings such as Apple, Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Rossini is also the founder of No Country for Young Women, a website whose aim is to provide positive role models for young girls, and the creator of #ThisIsWhataFilmDirectorLooksLike, a web-based project that posts GIFs of female and minority filmmakers, in an effort to promote their visibility. The latter project has been written about in Mashable, the Huffington Post Australia, and A Plus. It was also recently featured by the New York Times Gender Initiative on their social media. She is currently producing The Realists, a documentary about technology and social media's impact on self-esteem and self-image.
BYRON HURT
Byron Hurt is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, activist, and lecturer. He is a founding member of the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program, the leading college-based rape and domestic violence prevention initiative for college and professional athletics. He also served as an Associate Director of the first gender violence prevention program in the United States Marine Corps. His film credits include I AM A MAN: Black Masculinity in America, Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was later broadcast on the PBS series Independent Lens, and Soul Food Junkies, which won the CNN Best Documentary award at the American Black Film Festival and Best Documentary at the Urbanworld Film Festival. Soul Food Junkies also broadcast on Independent Lens. He is currently in post-production for his current film project, Hazing. Byron is an adjunct professor in the School of Journalism at Columbia University, Documentary Program, and recently served as a filmmaker-in-residence at American University.
JACKSON KATZ
Jackson Katz, Ph.D., is internationally renowned for his pioneering scholarship and activism on issues of gender, race and violence. He has long been a major figure and thought leader in the growing global movement of men working to promote gender equality and prevent gender violence. He is co-founder of Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP), one of the longest-running and most widely influential gender violence prevention programs in North America and beyond. He is the author of two books, including The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help and Man Enough? Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and the Politics of Presidential Masculinity. He is the creator of the award-winning Tough Guise educational documentary series, and the recently released video The Bystander Moment: Transforming Rape Culture at Its Roots. His TEDx talk, Violence Against Women Is a Men's Issue, has over 4 million views. He has lectured and trained in all fifty states, eight Canadian provinces and every continent except Antarctica.
JENNIFER L. POZNER
JENNIFER L. POZNER
JENNIFER L. POZNER
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
National Women’s Hall of Fame inductee and internationally renowned media scholar and feminist activist Jean Kilbourne appeared at Smith College on September 19, 2019 for a celebration of the 40th anniversary of Killing Us Softly, her pioneering documentary film series about media representations of women.
The event, Killing Us Softly: Then and Now, paid tribute to the impact the film has had on millions of viewers in all fifty states and more than 56 countries around the globe.
The event featured a panel of feminist scholars and filmmakers who have been inspired by Jean Kilbourne’s work.
In addition to Kilbourne, other featured guests included award-winning filmmakers Elena Rossini (The Illusionists) and Byron Hurt (Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes, Soul Food Junkies, and I Am a Man), Feminist Press Executive Director Jamia Wilson, Women in Media & News Founding Director Jennifer Pozner, acclaimed gender violence prevention educator Jackson Katz, and MEF Executive Director Sut Jhally. The event included video tributes, clips from all four versions of Killing Us Softly, and a panel discussion about how Kilbourne’s work has informed current media and gender activism.
The later editions of Kilbourne’s film were produced by the nonprofit Media Education Foundation (MEF). MEF released Killing Us Softly 3 in 2000 and Killing Us Softly 4 in 2010 and has since distributed these titles to more than 11,000 colleges, universities, churches, prisons, nonprofits, and other educational institutions. “Jean Kilbourne’s work has introduced hundreds of thousands of college students to important discussions about media education and representations of women,” says Sut Jhally, MEF’s Executive Director and a professor of Communication at UMass. “Her films have also played a critical role in supporting the work of the Media Education Foundation and helping us advance our mission.”
The panel discussion was facilitated by renowned author and feminist cultural critic Susan J. Douglas, the Catherine Neafie Kellogg Professor of Communication Studies at The University of Michigan and the author of numerous books including Enlightened Sexism, The Mommy Myth, and Where the Girls Are.
The event was co-sponsored by the Media Education Foundation, the Program for the Study for Women and Gender at Smith College, and Safe Passage.
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