This set of resources is designed to help teachers of Digital Media and Culture (COMM 365) select from the wealth of materials produced by diverse thought leaders about challenges in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in our digital media and culture. 

It was produced in 2020-2021 by a team of two professors and two graduate students in the School of Communication. Prof. Saif Shahin and Prof. Patricia Aufderheide worked with Ph.D. student Mariana Sánchez Santos and MFA student Marissa Woods to create the resource. We benefited from a university grant issued by the School of Communication’s DEI committee, in a program called Race Matters. The grant permitted us to pay the graduate students. 

The Communication Studies division decided to designate Digital Media and Culture as a course to fulfill a student requirement for courses designated as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion courses. We did so because we recognize that our culture is pervasively and systemically racialized toward white supremacy, and therefore so are our pedagogies and scholarship generally. As a school and a division, we are committed to addressing that racialization systemically as well. Taking an anti-oppression stance means, as we learn from Prof. Ibram Kendi’s work, to change policies. Therefore, we undertook to change our curriculum policy, to mandate that this required introductory course for the Communication Studies degree be taught through a DEI lens. 

These resources are not intended to represent the range of important work in communication studies and related fields on these topics. Rather, they are intended to provide an entry specifically into the wealth of resources created by diverse thought leaders on topics in digital media and culture, though a lens reflecting concern for diversity, equity and inclusion. 

Do you have suggestions for enriching this site? (We’re particularly interested in class exercises!) Please write us at DEIresourcesAU@gmail.com. We don’t currently have continuing resources to update this site but may be able to garner some in the future.