The Graphic Possibilities Podcast J. Chambliss

In this episode, I’m joined by Owen Gottlieb. Owen is an Associate Professor of Interactive Games and Media and the Founder and Lead Research Faculty of the Initiative in Religion, Culture, and Policy (RCP) at the RIT MAGIC Center and MAGIC Spell Studios. Owen leads the Interaction, Media, and Learning Lab. The lab is focused on interventions that expand our understanding of learning, exploration, play, and media. The lab’s projects encompass games and simulations for religious and cultural literacy, game design for policy impact, applications of interactive media for healing and wellness, uncovering valuable historical instructional design histories, and pioneering new approaches to narrative.

The new segment, "Notes from the Fields,” is an opportunity to discuss interdisciplinary practice, social impact, and popular culture to explain how the media we consume can become a vital tool to help us understand our contemporary moment. These notes inspire us as teachers and researchers trying to make sense of popular culture. For me, it is an opportunity to share scholarly discourse that shapes thinking and builds arguments we take to the classroom and the public.

In this conversation I spoke with Dr. Walter Greason and Tim Fielder about “A Graphic History of Hip Hop #1.” This new comic project explore the history and impact of Hip Hop and was created in conjunction with New York City Department of Social Studies and Civics. In this conversation we learned about how the project came to be and what they hope to accomplish.

In this episode, I spoke with author Gamal Hennessy about his new Kickstarter project, a book to teach readers about the freelance comic book publishing.

In this episode of the Graphic Possibilities Podcast, we return to our audio commentary on comics. We turned to Dr. Christina Knopf for this commentary to learn about comics and politics. Dr. Knopf specializes in political communication. She is a rhetorician and sociologist studying the rhetoric of the popular arts - comics, cartoons, letters, films, animations, and shows - for what and how it communicates about our social-political reality. Her work particularly focuses on depictions of war and the military and of politics and campaigns, with an interest in concerns of gender, race, health, community, and civic engagement. Her book, Politics in the Gutters: American Politicians and Elections in Comic Book Media, was published in 2021 by the University Press of Mississippi. Politics in the Gutter make clear the assertion that politic intersecting with comics is a recent occurrence is wrong. Instead, she demonstrates how politics and comics have been and continue to be in dialogue. The audio commentary provides an important overview for those looking to learn more about this important subfield of comic studies. You can find more bibliographies by visiting the Graphic Possibilities Comic Research Guide available through the MSU Library.

Dr. Lonny J. Avi Brooks is an associate professor in communication at California State University, East Bay. As the Co-Principal Investigator for the Long Term and Futures Thinking in Education Project, he has piloted the integration of futures thinking into the communication curriculum. As a leading voice in Afrofuturism, Brooks contributes prolifically to the field through diverse mediums, including numerous journals, book chapters, conferences, exhibitions, and festivals in the United States and worldwide. He is a co-creator alongside Ahmed Best and Jade Fabello of Afrorithm Futures Group, an afrofuturist story collective and consultancy that creates tools to empower corporations, educational institutions, and individuals to imagine new, more equitable, and inclusive visions of the future.



In this conversation, we talk about his views on Afrofuturism as a community practice, especially in light of his research on foresight and developing tools to create new future visions.  Dr. Brooks is one of the featured interviews in Afrofantastic: The Transformative World of Afrofuturism, a new documentary available at pbs.org. 

In this episode, we spoke with Dr. Tobias c. van Veen. 



Dr. van Veen is Visiting Scholar at the ReImagining Value Action Lab at Lakehead University and Visiting Professor in Humanities at Quest University. He holds a doctorate in Philosophy and Communication Studies from McGill University. His transdisciplinary research and teaching address the philosophy of race, sound, and technology in critical media studies. 



He has published widely on Afrofuturism, posthumanism, and electronic dance music cultures (EDMC). tobias is lead editor of the “Black Lives, Black Politics, Black Futures” special issue of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies (2018), editor of the Afrofuturism special issue of Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture (2013), and co-editor of the Journal’s special issue “Echoes from the Dub Diaspora” (2015). 



In 2020 he launched the Afrofuturist Studies & Speculative Cultures series on Lexington Books. A sound/media artist, filmmaker, and tactical turntablist since 1993, tobias has exhibited and curated interventions, events, and broadcasts worldwide. An award-winning broadcaster and photojournalist, tobias hosts the Other Planes: Afro/Futurism podcast on CreativeDisturbance.org and curates the sound-art label IOSOUND.ca.

In our conversation, we delve into the history of Afrofuturist sound and the vital impact of Detriot Techno in that history.