Ebert Symposium Keynote Address

"What The Wiz Was (and Is): Media Industries, Distribution, Reception and The Wiz" will be presented by Dr. Alfred L. Martin, Jr., Chair of the Department of Cinematic Arts at University of Miami, the keynote speaker at this year's Ebert Symposium.

As a part of the Ebert Symposium’s theme, “Onscreen Fantasies/IRL Illusions: Fandom, Parasocial Relationships, and the Media,” Martin draws attention to The Wiz as the first Black-cast blockbuster and re-assesses its significance to issues of Black media production, initial reception, distribution, and its enduring fandom.

Concomitantly, this presentation is about the ways, particularly within a socio-political environment hostile to Blackness, The Wiz provides a prism through which to place the feminist “I” and joy into research.

Engaging media industry studies, fandom/reception studies, and media studies, this presentation argues that the history and ongoing legacy of The Wiz is far more complicated than reducing it to a financial failure.

Martin is associate professor of media studies and chair of the Department of Cinematic Arts at the University of Miami. He is author of Fandom for Us, by Us: The Pleasures and Practices of Black Audiences (New York University Press, 2025) and The Generic Closet: Black Gayness and the Black-Cast Sitcom (Indiana University Press, 2021), editor of Rolling: Blackness and Mediated Comedy (Indiana University Press, 2024), and co-editor of The Golden Girls: Tales from the Lanai (Rutgers University Press, 2025).

A former marketing communications executive and ballet dancer, in his spare time, Martin is a ballet teacher, coach, and choreographer. This event is free and open to the public. Join us in person or register to join via Zoom.

Presented by the Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies.