The Georgia Institute of Technology is now offering a new Black media studies minor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication. The multidisciplinary program combines a variety of innovative approaches and methods to study the relationships between media, culture, and racial politics on people of African descent. It also uses digital technologies to design and make media that connects to the cultural practices of Black people. Courses cover a number of subjects including hip hop studies, Afrofuturism, Black documentary films and podcasts, technoculture, gender, and Black cultural politics, and the Southern experience.
“Done right, we knew this could be the beginning of something — the opportunity to contribute to the foregrounding of a field that really focuses on the intersection of media, culture, and technology, with racial blackness, but also cultural blackness, and what all of that means,” said Joycelyn Wilson, an assistant professor and lead for the Black Media studies minor. “Being in a city like Atlanta, where we see those intersections happening in real time, it makes sense for Georgia Tech to be a place that really prepares its students for the type of world that includes the intersection of such concepts when it comes to media, technology, and culture.”
Dr. Wilson joined the faculty at Georga Tech in 2017. She holds a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. She also earned a master’s degree at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.
