Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Across my research, teaching, and service, I take an intersectional approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
research
I began my doctoral fieldwork on race inequality in advertising in 2010, defended my dissertation in 2012, and then wrote two articles and a book chapter on the subject. After the murder of George Floyd sparked a mainstream expansion of the Black Lives Matter movement, I sought out more public facing venues for my argument by participating in a roundtable on race and brand mascots, moderating a panel of scholars of color at the ADCOLOR Conference, and publishing three editorials: Corporate Ads Said Black Lives Matter. But the Industry Creating Them is Nearly All White (NBC THINK); Agencies Say Black Lives Matter. But Only a Shock to the System Will Drive Real Change (Ad Age); and The Richards Group Incident Is Advertising’s Diversity Déjà Vu (AdWeek). That same year, MediaVillage invited me to contribute a bi-monthly column on their Advancing Diversity platform where I published 25 editorials on inequality and media culture covering topics ranging from how advertising's star model and NDAs protect abusers to Ted Lasso's missed opportunity. This work led to invited talks at two advertising agencies: The Ghosts of Mad Men at GTB and Why Are We Stuck? at Klick Health.
teaching
In my COM 475 Critical Media Practice Seminar, my students produced The Identity Puzzle: Understanding Intersectionality Through Sustained Dialogue in conjunction with the local UT chapter and national office of the Sustained Dialogue Institute Campus Network. I also partnered with fellow faculty across departments to create the Let's Talk Equality initiative as a response to a legislative threat to marriage equality in Florida and as a way to engage students in conversations about privilege, bias, and social justice. I participated in two media projects. For the first, I shot and edited Speaking Privilege, a short montage of highlights from student speeches expressing how they would feel if one of the privileges they cherished was taken away. For the second project, I worked with my students in COM 443: Communication and Cultural Studies to write, act, and shoot Straightforward, a theory-driven short film featuring a professor with a mysterious past challenging his students' assumptions about the nature of sexual morality. In the tradition of The Twilight Zone, the film critiqued the present by imagining a parallel universe and alternate future where heterosexuality was against the law. I wrote about the experience for the Journal of Media Literacy Education. And in my COM 300 The Documentary Tradition class, I sought to decolonize the conventional syllabus by assigning the book Subject to Reality: Women and Documentary Film, which centers pioneering (yet marginalized) female nonfiction filmmakers and brought in the author, Shilyh Warren, as a guest speaker.
Intersectionality: Sustained Dialogue
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Speaking Privilege: Let's Talk Equality
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Straightforward: Let's Talk Equality
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Service
In 2014, the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equal Opportunity at the University of Florida invited me to present Add Color: How Diversity Triumphalism in Sports, Entertainment, and Advertising Support the White Savior Complex. USF invited me back the following year to join a “Diversity in the Media” panel and screen my film Not Just a Game at their 12th Annual Diversity Summit. In 2017, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) invited me to participate in a Media Brunch to discuss topics such as Islam in the media, Trump's executive orders, and other issues impacting the American-Muslim community with local clergy and news media. Later that year, the Florida Holocaust Museum hosted a screening of the documentary film Paragraph 175, which examines Nazi persecution of homosexuals, and asked me to participate as a panelist for the post-screening discussion. Closer to home, I spearheaded a parental leave policy petition aimed to address gender inequities at the University of Tampa in particular and higher education in general, asked the faculty senate to revise course perception surveys to prevent bias against women and minorities, argued for a better visa policy for international faculty, and am currently mentoring two junior faculty members of color.