Ronald L. Jackson II: Invitation to Lecture Series: When I talk about American Studies, I talk about.... HS 34.K1 ( June 23, 10 – 11:30 am)

Dr. Ronald L. Jackson II is Professor of Communication in the Department of Communication at the University of Cincinnati. He is also 2nd Vice President of the National Communication Association.

Author of thirteeen books and more than 75 academic publications, Dr. Ronald L. Jackson II is one of the leading communication and identity scholars in the nation. His research examines how theories of identity relate to intercultural and gender communication. In his teaching and research, he explores how and why people negotiate and define themselves as they do. Additionally, Professor Jackson‘s
research includes empirical, conceptual, and critical approaches to the study of masculinity, identity negotiation, Whiteness, and Afrocentricity. He is nationally recognized for having developed a model known as the Black Masculine Identity Theory. Among his latest publications are the monograph  Scripting the BlackMasculine Body: Identity, Discourse and Racial Politics in Popular Media (SUNY Press, 2013) and the edited collection (with Sheena Howard) Black Comics: Past and Present (Continuum, 2013), which won the 2014 Comic Con International Will Eisner Comics Industry Award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work. Together with Kimberly R. Moffitt and Simone Puff he is currently working on an edited collection of essays on the widely popular television series Scandal, titled Gladiators in Suits: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Representation in Scandal.

Before coming to the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Jackson was Professor of Media Studies and Africana Studies in the Institute of Communications Research at University of Illinois. Prior to that he was Professor of Intercultural Communication in the Department of Communication Arts & Sciences at Penn State University, where he had been employed for ten years. He received his Ph.D. in Rhetoric/Intercultural Communication from Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1996.

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