#CommunicationSoWhite Syllabus

#CommunicationSoWhite Syllabus

Atilla Hallsby (University of Minnesota-Twin Cities), Guy McHendry (Creighton University), and I have been working on developing a collection of resources which discuss the structural barriers marginalized scholars face in our discipline. We have noticed that in many of the conversations shared around the National Communication Association (NCA) Distinguished Scholars (DS) controversy, there is a lack of awareness about, or dismissal of, the experiences of marginalized scholars in our discipline. We have created this resource to help generate shared knowledge about structural barriers in the field in the hopes that through practices of reading, listening, and learning we can work to make NCA structurally, materially, and symbolically more diverse and inclusive.

I am copying our introduction to the page below.

This syllabus emerged from an ongoing crisis in the discipline of Communication Studies. While scholars at the margins have long argued that Communication Studies was hostile to their being, scholarship, and identity, recent events have pierced the discipline's white center.

First, Chakratty et al.'s (2018) watershed essay, #CommunicationSoWhite finds, "that non-White scholars are significantly underrepresented as published authors and under-cited as producers of value in the field of communication" (p. 261). Further, McGee and Cisneros (2018) explain the ways in which the problem of racial hostility extends to sub-fields as well, "our overarching take-away is that the 'imperative of racial rhetorical criticism' necessitates not only challenging canons, theories, and methods, but also the forms of education, knowledge production, and circulation that structure Rhetoric" (p. 300).

Second, during the summer of 2019, emergent challenges to the ways the NCA selects its Distinguished Scholars, and the racial homogeneity of the vast majority of DS awardees made the structural whiteness of NCA very clear. The full effect of this schism still remains unclear, but the ensuing conversation has been divisive and demonstrated apparent antipathy towards diversity and hostility toward the experiences of scholars at the margins of Communication Scholars. You can find a full timeline of these events here.

As three white scholars in Communication Studies, we recognize that our identities, citational practices, and privilege are part of the structural problem in the field. Even as committed anti-racists, we benefit from white privilege and support racist structures. Rather than demanding that scholars at the margins do the work of teaching us, we assembled this document so that we (and hopefully many others) can work to understand the myriad ways our discipline, institutions, and profession is hostile to a variety of scholars. We do want to credit the many scholars in the Communication Scholars for Transformation Facebook Group who contributed suggestions to this list. This collection benefited immeasurably from their labor.

We ask that you join us. Read these documents and suggest others. This is a living resource to help us do the work of making much needed structural changes. Also, if you have resources that you think belong here please consider submitting them.

Link: https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fgeorgefmchendry.com%2Fcomsowhite.html&data=02%7C01%7Cbryanm%40LSU.EDU%7C3e3aff69f4384f6de09e08d711111419%7C2d4dad3f50ae47d983a09ae2b1f466f8%7C0%7C0%7C636996637369620469&sdata=XfGXejJSPYSE0luMkQqSEus6H8bWvm88VFpkaPm%2FJcU%3D&reserved=0


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Bryan J. McCann, PhD
Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
Department of Communication Studies
African and African American Studies (Affiliate)
Women’s and Gender Studies (Affiliate)
Louisiana State University
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Author: The Mark of Criminality: Rhetoric, Race, and Gangsta Rap in the War-on-Crime Era<http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Mark-of-Criminality,6607.aspx> (U of Alabama P, 2017)
Web: https://www.lsu.edu/hss/cmst/people/faculty/BMccann.php


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