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Munene Mwaniki - Western Carolina University. Cullowhee, NC, US

Munene Mwaniki

Associate Professor | Western Carolina University

Cullowhee, NC, UNITED STATES

Media

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Munene Mwaniki Publication

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Industry Expertise (3)

Research

Education/Learning

Writing and Editing

Areas of Expertise (5)

Sport

Racism

Sociology

Anthropology

Immigration

Education (3)

Miami University: M.S.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Ph.D. 2014

Miami University: B.S.

Languages (1)

  • English

Media Appearances (5)

Tribe wants to name former chief as new Jackson County namesake

Smoky Mountain News  online

2020-11-10

“Yes, the name of this county is coming next,” Munene Mwaniki, assistant professor of anthropology and sociology at Western Carolina University, said July 11. “All you need to know about Andrew Jackson is that he was a slave owner, he was an Indian killer, he was a town destroyer and he and his men made horse reins out of the flesh of our indigenous brothers and sisters and non-binary folks.”

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Take it down? Crowds turn out in Sylva to oppose, support Confederate statue

Smoky Mountain News  online

2020-07-15

The statue’s removal would be a good start, said the final speaker Munene Mwaniki, who is an assistant professor of anthropology and sociology at Western Carolina University. “Removing a statue might not seem very significant, but we would like a moral commitment from the people of Sylva to begin making the changes that we need in this city and in this county and this town,” he said.

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Confederate memorials still a monumental issue

Smoky Mountain News  online

2020-06-17

Munene Mwaniki, 35, was also present at the Sylva demonstration and has a unique personal and professional perspective. Son of a black Kenyan father and a white American mother — both academics — Mwaniki has lived in Jackson County since the age of 6, and currently serves as an assistant professor of anthropology and sociology at Western Carolina University.

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Black death in a pandemic

Asheville Citizen-Times  online

2020-06-09

As more than 100,000 Americans are dead because of COVID-19, we must face the bare realities of life in the United States.

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From the Desk of Munene Mwaniki: Holding a Mirror to White Supremacy

UNP Blog  online

2017-09-27

The following is a contribution from Munene Franjo Mwaniki, author of The Black Migrant Athlete: Media, Race, and the Diaspora in Sports (September 2017). Mwaniki is an assistant professor of sociology at Western Carolina University.

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Articles (4)

Islam and the foreign Other

Sports in African History, Politics, and Identity Formation

2019 This chapter provides some insight into how antiblack racism and Islamophobia are maintained in sport. It examines the media representation of the first black African to play in the National Basketball Association, Hakeem Olajuwon. The chapter discusses the aforementioned homogenization of Islam in a literature review that also includes previous research concerning Olajuwon and Islam in sport.

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The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Nationality in Sport: Media Representation of the Ogwumike Sisters

Journal of Sport and Social Issues

2019 The diversity of Black America in general, and how it pertains to gender in particular, remains understudied in analyses of sports media. To get a better understanding of the Black female athlete in our society today, this project addresses the intersections of race, gender, and nationality/ethnicity in U.S. media.

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Biological Fandom: Our Changing Relationship to Sport and the Bodies We Watch

Communication & Sport

2015 In the last few decades, our exposure to sport has increased dramatically through advancements in television, Internet, and mobile technologies. This rise in exposure and accessibility has increased biological knowledge among sport “fans,” a concept I use broadly, and complicated our relationship with sport. Using Rose’s notion of biological citizenship, which draws on Foucault’s concepts of biopolitics and biopower, I introduce “biological fandom” as a way to think about the intensification of bioknowledge in and around sport.

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Reading the career of a Kenyan runner: The case of Tegla Loroupe

International Review for the Sociology of Sport

2011 In this article I examine the sport media representations throughout the career of now retired Kenyan distance runner Tegla Loroupe. As part of a larger project to examine media representation of African athletes, Loroupe was chosen because of her preeminence as a marathon runner and place as one of the first female runners from Kenya to achieve international success.

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