Dr. Naeemah Clark will be on campus on October 20th for a talk open to the public on diversity in the media.

Drs. Allyson DeVito and Sarah Kercsmar (Instructional Communication & Research) have received funding from the College of Communication and Information to engage students in workshops and campus events on the topic of diversity in the media. They plan to use the funding to bring a guest speaker to campus to deliver a talk and conduct workshops with students. This fall, they have scheduled Dr. Naeemah Clark, an Associate Professor of Communications at Elon University to speak. Dr. Clark is the author of African Americans in the History of Mass Communication (2014) and co-author of Diversity in U.S. Mass Media (2011). Her research interests include race and gender, economic status, disabilities, LGBTQIA and ethnicity in the media. She also studies and teaches about economic, programming and diversity issues related in the media and entertainment industries.

“The main goal of this event is to bring together students across the college and university community along with faculty members and the public to listen to and discuss issues related to diversity in the media and how we can engage more with the diverse communities around us. More specifically, we want to bring in a media diversity expert, Dr. Naeemah Clark of Elon University, to deliver a talk on campus and also have this scholar meet with various classes to discuss issues of diversity related to the Lexington community," they explain.

Dr. DeVito is the coordinator for the CIS 112 Accelerated Composition and Communication course, which includes a service learning component. Dr. Kercsmar is the Program Coordinator for Instructional Communication and Research in the School of Information Science.

"With the current discussions on campus related to diversity, we feel this is an opportune time to hold this event," says DeVito.

Dr. Clark's talk is entitled "Does The Media Tell Us Who We Should Be?" and will be held Thursday, October 20, 2016 at 6 p.m. in the Kincaid Auditorium in the Gatton Building. The event is free and open to the public. Dr. Clark will meet with CIS 112 students the Friday after and lead workshops designed to prepare them to present their own talks at the end of the semester. For more information, please contact Dr. Allyson DeVito at allydevito [at] uky.edu.

Edit: A previous version of this announcement referred to the event as a TED Talk. While the format very much follows that of a TED Talk, it is not an official TEDx event.