“The Sincerity Threshold and the Media Theory of Muhammad Ali”
Jennifer Fay (Department of English and Cinema & Media Arts, Vanderbilt University)
Friday, December 5, 2026
2 – 4 p.m.
Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities
From the mid 1960s through the mid 1970s, sincerity emerged as a literary and philosophical concept in transition and a seemingly fixed legal and racially charged standard of religious self-presentation where the US military draft and conscientiousobjector status were concerned. Muhammad Ali is the most famous conscientious objector in US history and one of the most intensely surveilled and scrutinized petitioners. From 1967 to 1971, Ali had to manifest his “sincere belief”—had to make his belief in the Nation of Islam believable—in press conferences, films, and talk shows, in the boxing ring, on the street, and in the court of law.
What does it mean to be sincere, to be sincerely religious, and to appear as such across media platforms? What is the relationship between inner belief, the media of appearance, and American conventions of religious comportment? A media theory of religious sincerity in this period is a media theory of Muhammad Ali. Connecting Ali’s trials of sincerity to the films of William Greaves, including his documentary of the 1971 Ali-Frazier World Heavyweight Championship, The Fight, and Greave’s earlier docudrama Symbiopsychotaxiplasm (1967), this presentation explores the vicissitudes of total coverage alongside the high-stakes, racialized drama of sincere self-theatricalization.
About Jennifer Fay
Jennifer Fay is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of Cinema & Media Arts and Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. Her research and teaching are broadly concerned with transatlantic film and media theory, environmental criticism (including critical Anthropocene studies), and the relationship between aesthetics and politics. This talk is part of newish book project with the working title “Sincerity and the Media of Appearance.”