The Department of Communication is looking forward to hosting our second guest in our fall 2022 Speaker Series: Dr. Armond Towns! His talk is titled “The Medium is the Message, Revisited: Media and Black Epistemologies” and will take place on Monday, October 24, 5:00-6:30PM in 116 Murphey Hall.
Bio and abstract:
Abstract: This talk examines the political-economic context that informed the theoretical position of mid-twentieth century Canadian media theory, particularly the work of Marshall McLuhan. It opens up new ways to think about this context in relation to not just media, but also race, humanity, and radical politics.
Dr. Armond R. Towns is an associate professor in Communication and Media Studies. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Communication. His research interests bring together Black studies, cultural studies, and media philosophy. His book, On Black Media Philosophy, was published in 2022 with the University of California Press. Dr. Towns is also the cofounder and inaugural editor of the journal, Communication and Race, the newest journal of the National Communication Association (U.S.). Prior to joining Carleton University, Dr. Towns taught at the University of Denver and the University of Richmond. At the University of Richmond, Dr. Towns’s research, teaching, and service led to him coauthoring the proposal to establish the university’s first Africana Studies Program, approved in 2020. Currently, Dr. Towns is developing a project on the relationship between the history of communication studies and the history of Black studies, focusing specifically on the development of both fields in U.S. and Canada.