Pan-African Studies | Libby Lewis

Libby Lewis earned a Ph.D. in African Diaspora Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.  Her research on the news media includes the U.S., United Kingdom, and South Africa.  As a Fulbright-Hayes Scholar, she studied Zulu, to facilitate research on the television news media in South Africa.  Dr. Lewis was awarded the 2018-2019 Bailey Fellowship through the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) American Communities Program.  She was also awarded the 2018 Center for the Study of Genders and Sexualities (CSGS) Faculty Research Fellowship in support of her current project in the area of genders and sexualities at the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, and nation entitled, “Legitimizing Hate.”

Dr. Lewis is a Center for Effective Teaching and Learning (CETL) Technology Enhanced Certificate awardee.  She served on the California State University Los Angeles, Natural and Social Science Education Program Task Force.  The Task Force was charged with helping to transform education through innovative and intentional learning environments that include socially conscious and equity-minded civic engagement, and impactful inter-disciplinary research.  She has worked with faculty across disciplines through the New York based Social Science Research Center (SSRC) to address the impact of social media and related digital technologies on education, culture, democracy, and elections.

Dr. Lewis was invited to the UK to speak and consult with diverse audiences on a wide range of subjects including the myth of Post-racialism, Marketing, Branding, Innovative Communications, and Cultural Representation.  She has contributed to radio, television, and online media in the U.S. and United Kingdom covering the U.S. Elections and the politics of representation in shaping our worldview.  Dr. Lewis was invited to Washington DC to speak on a panel entitled, “Managing Racial Discrimination in the Newsroom.”  She accepted an invitation to speak on a panel at the United Nations on “Global Diversity and Gender in the Media” and was invited to the White House the day after President Obama’s Inauguration where she met briefly with First Lady Michelle Obama.

Her research, teaching, and writing includes issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, popular culture, and the politics of representation in traditional and new media form.  Her main areas of engagement are African American Studies, African Diaspora Studies, Communications, Cultural Studies, Critical Media Studies, Film Studies, and Sociology.  Her 2017 book publication is entitled, The Myth of Post-racialism in Television News (Routledge, 2017), which focuses on how journalists negotiate race, gender, and sexuality in a corporate newsroom culture and foregrounds the experiences of Black journalists. Broadly, her research takes up professionalization in relation to language and power, neoliberalism, democracy, “the nation,” cultural practices, media technologies, media practice, agency, resistance, hetero/homonormativity, and discourse of the human.  Dr. Lewis’ book is informed by her experience as a television news anchor/reporter for CBS and NBC. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, loves surfing, sunsets, and pursuing diverse approaches to education with purpose and passion.