CHESTERTOWN, MD — Washington College’s Communication and Media Studies (CMS) speaker series welcomes Robert Mejia on February 17, 2020 to discuss “Race and Urban Communication Infrastructure.” The event, which is open to the public, begins at 4:30 p.m. in Hynson Lounge of Hodson Hall.
An assistant professor of communication at North Dakota State University, Mejia is a critical cultural scholar invested in understanding how politics, economics, culture, and technology are embedded within each other. His article documenting the racial history and infrastructure of contemporary propaganda, “White Lies: A Racial History of the (Post)Truth,” was awarded the 2019 National Communication Association’s outstanding article award from the Critical and Cultural Studies Division.
In this talk, Mejia will examine the city as a complicated confluence of uneven political, economic, cultural, and environmental interests. “Critical geographers and sociologists have documented how the inequitable power dynamics governing these relationships have led to segregated cities. This public lecture builds upon this research to illustrate how communication infrastructure is a fundamental element of urban planning, and how an emphasis on communication can help us to design better cities capable of combating racism and other forms of systemic discrimination.”
Mejia’s talk is supported by the William James Fund, the Communication and Media Studies Program, the Center for Environment & Society, and the Department of Environmental Science and Studies.
For more information about the CMS speaker series see https://www.washcoll.edu/departments/communication-and-media-studies/cms-speaker-series/
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