All in Community

Picturing What It Means To Be Free

Picturing What It Means To Be Free

Cheryl Thompson
Black History Month, Community, History, Photography, , Visual Culture

To have hope you have to dare to question the things you have taken as essential truths. Where many folks read the image of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in 1965, Colin Kaepernick in 2017, and Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, as depicting the act of kneeling in protest to systemic racism and against systems of capital that have benefited from Black servitude and disenfranchisement, others see anti-heroes, unpatriotic rebel rousers, and non-citizens who are not “grateful” for all that they have been given.

Black Canadian Media (Digital and Film) Is Having a Glow Up Moment

Black Canadian Media (Digital and Film) Is Having a Glow Up Moment

Cheryl Thompson
Community, Black History Month

The fields of digital humanities, media studies, journalism, image and visual culture studies, and communication studies often ignore Black Canadian perspectives. In many instances, engagement with race, digital technologies, media production, culture, and history is also absent. Over the past decade, Black Canadians have been making significant moves in digital content creation, film production, digital archives, and heritage preservation.

Black History Month: How to Make February Matter

Black History Month: How to Make February Matter

Cheryl Thompson
Community, Black History Month

As a Black Canadian scholar, writer, and public speaker, I participate in Black History Month every year. I am also old enough to remember when there was no Black History Month, and we would sit around complaining about the lack thereof. But every year when February rolls around, I find myself torn about it, especially the way it is presented within universities where Black people often do not have a seat at the table (and even if we do, too often what we say is met with deafening silence or ignored altogether).

Thinking Beyond 'Black Excellence'

Thinking Beyond 'Black Excellence'

Cheryl Thompson
Community, History, University

I completely understand the logic behind Black Excellence — Black people, especially students are underrepresented, under acknowledged, and often are made to feel like outsiders at universities, especially in Canada where universities are still predominantly White. However, when you only celebrate a people’s accomplishments and ignore the challenges they have had to endure, and systemic realities they lived (and continue to live) through, Black Excellence becomes the veil that shields us from seeing how our systems and institutions are still rooted in White supremacist notions of “success”.

We Need to Talk about How We Communicate at Our Universities

We Need to Talk about How We Communicate at Our Universities

Cheryl Thompson
Black Women, Canada, Community, University

It is a uniquely challenging time to be employed or a student at a university, especially if you are Black woman or a student(s) with divergent opinions. From the high profile firing of Claudine Gay at Harvard and its aftermath, to the tragic suicide of Dr. Antoinette Candia-Bailey, Vice President of Student Affairs at Lincoln University, to the Toronto Star’s investigation into my own university’s Law School and the student letter in support of Palestine, where there's a bad news story, institutions of higher learning are in it.