Andre E. Johnson was named director of graduate studies in the department of communication and film at the University of Memphis in Tennessee. Dr. Johnson’s research centers on the intersection of rhetoric, race, and religion. In addition to his primary appointment at the University of Memphis, he teaches as a distinguished professor at Memphis Theological Seminary. He also currently serves as director of the Center for the Study of Rhetoric, Race, and Religion and as editor of the Journal of Communication and Religion.
Dr. Johnson earned his bachelor’s degree in communication from the University of Tennessee at Martin. He holds a master of divinity degree from the Memphis Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in communication and rhetoric from the University of Memphis.
Taylor L. Whitehead, assistant professor of music and director of marching and pep bands at Virginia State University, has been elected president of the HBCU Band & Orchestra Directors’ Consortium, a national organization dedicated to supporting music programs at historically Black colleges and universities. Dr. Whitehead joined Virginia State University in 2018 as assistant band director. Before that, he spent more than two decades as director of bands at Warren County High School in Warrenton, Virginia.
Dr. Whitehead is an alumnus of Virginia State University, where he majored in music education. He received his master’s degree in music education from Norfolk State University in Virginia and his doctorate the same discipline from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Paul Joseph López Oro was granted tenure and promoted to associate professor of Africana studies at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. A transdisciplinary Black studies scholar, Dr. López Oro studies Black Latin American and U.S. Black Latinx social movements, Black diaspora theories and ethnographies, and Black queer feminisms. His first book, Indigenous Blackness: The Queer World-Making Politics of Garifuna Nueva York, is set for publication this fall by Columbia University Press.
Dr. López Oro is a graduate of St. John’s University, where he majored in history. He holds a master’s degree in Latin American studies from the University of New Mexico, a master’s degree in African American studies from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and a Ph.D. in African and African diaspora studies from the University of Texas at Austin.
