Catherine Knight Steele

Catherine Knight Steele is an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland - College Park and was the Founding Director of the African American Digital Humanities Initiative (AADHum). She now directs the Black Communication and Technology lab (BCaT) as a part of the Digital Inquiry, Speculation, Collaboration, & Optimism Network funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Her research focuses on race, gender, and media, with a specific emphasis on African American culture and discourse in traditional and new media. She examines representations of marginalized communities in the media and how groups resist oppression and practice joy using online technology to create spaces of community. Dr. Steele's research on the Black blogosphere, digital discourses of resistance and joy, and digital Black feminism has been published in such journals as Social Media + Society, Feminist Media Studies, and Television and New Media. She is the author of Digital Black Feminism (NYU Press), which examines the relationship between Black women and technology as a centuries-long gendered and racial project in the U.S. Read more at: CatherineKnightSteele.com