Growing Pains with Nicholas Flores #103 - Aaron Donaldson

Dr. Aaron Donaldson is a Communication Studies lecturer at Cal Poly Humboldt. He also co-hosts a podcast with his wife Kate called The Alien Movie Project, "... a podcast that examines the narrative and affective politics of alien movies." Aaron also co-hosts another podcast with Charles, a Purple-Heart veteran and long-time cinephile, called the Reel War Project where they explore "... the narrative, affective, and production politics of the most actiony of action movies: The War Movie." Based off his research for The Alien Movie Project, Aaron has authored a book called "The Alien Movie Project: Studying the Narrative, Affective and Production Politics of Alien Stories in Cinema". You can find the book online (@he.kendallhunt.com/product/alien-movie-project-studying-narrative-affective-and-production-politics-alien-stories) as well as The Alien Movie Project podcast (@alienmovieproject.com).

0:00 | Start
1:20 | The Alien Movie Project
14:41 | Intersectional Feminism
27:32 | White privilege
38:26 | Intersectional feminist/Marxist lens interpreting the movies
43:11 | Critical Theory vs Critical Thinking
58:50 | "White Acceptability"
1:08:16 | People being dismissive against Critical Theory lines of research
1:25:13 | The idea of "stolen land"
1:48:38 | "Whiteness" as an ongoing form of systematic privilege
1:52:02 | Excerpt from the book