Catherine Knight Steele
Associate Professor, Communication
Director, Black Communication and Technology Lab, Communication
Affiliate Associate Professor, The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
cksteele@umd.edu
2105 Skinner Building; 0301 Hornbake Library
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Education
Ph.D., , University of Illinois-Chicago
Research Expertise
Digital Media
Gender
Mass Communication
Race/Ethnicity
Catherine Knight Steele is an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland - College Park and was the Founding Director of the Andrew W. Mellon funded African American Digital Humanities Initiative (AADHum). She now directs the Black Communication and Technology lab as a part of the Digital Inquiry, Speculation, Collaboration, & Optimism Network funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Dr. Steele earned her Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Illinois at Chicago. 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 utilize online technology to create spaces of community. Dr. Steele's research on the Black blogosphere, digital discourses of resistance, and digital Black feminism has been published in such journals as Social Media + Society, Information, Communication and Society, and Television and New Media. Her book Digital Black Feminism (NYU Press Fall 2021), examines the relationship between Black women and technology as a centuries-long gendered and racial project in the U.S.
Twitter: @SteeleCat717