Skip to main content

Christiana Abraham, Ph.D

Assistant Professor, Communication Studies


Christiana  Abraham, Ph.D
Office: L-CJ 5213  
Communication Studies and Journalism Building,
7141 Sherbrooke W.
Phone: (514) 848-2424 ext. 5056
Email: christiana.abraham@concordia.ca

Education


Ph.D  Communication Studies,  McGill University

MA Media Studies, Concordia University

BA Communication Studies,  Concordia University



 

Teaching and Research Specialization


Critical Race Studies and Pedagogies  

Race, Ethnicity & Media 

Decolonial, Post/neo-Colonial Representations 

Visuality, Representations and Culture 

Gender & Development Communication  

Rural Communications

Media and Propaganda Studies

South-South/Global South Communications


 

Biography


Christiana Abraham's  teaching and research focuses on Critical Race Studies; Race, Ethnicity and Media; Visual Representations and Culture; Post/de-colonialism and Gender and Transnational and Global-South Media Practices. Prior to her appointment at Concordia she held the position of Lecturer in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus.

Her academic interventions are grounded in field experiences and expertise in media and Development-Communication. She holds extensive experiences in media practice having worked as a television news anchor,  journalist and talk show host in the Caribbean. She was also Features editor of an international lifestyle magazine in Canada. 

As a rural communications specialist, she coordinated several United Nations funded development-communication projects in the Global South.  She is also an independent Curator, whose work revolves around the radical re-thinking of archives, community and orality as forms of grounded grass-roots activism that critically reclaims and re-narrates established aesthetics, cannons and cultural knowledges. Her scholarship in interested in the destabilisation and re-visualization of visuality in anti-racist and de-colonial pedagogies.

Dr. Abraham is the curator of “Protests and Pedagogy: Representations, Memories, and Meanings” an archival exhibition that marked the 50th anniversary of the Sir George Williams Students Protests.  Held at Concordia University, the exhibition offered a rare glimpse into the archival records related to these 1969 protests. 

Prior to this, she curated the photographic exhibition: “From the Archives to the Everyday: Caribbean Visualities and Meanings”. This experimental research and curating project engaged audience readings of vintage family photographs through complex, dynamic views of Caribbean life.

 

 



Academic/Research/Community Skills

Lecturer, Researcher, Writer 

Independent Visual Curator

Development Communication/Rural Communication Specialist

Community Activist

Journalist 

Media practitioner, Producer



 







Taught Courses


Fall, 2023

COMS 361: Propaganda
COMS 424/524: Alternative Media


Winter, 2024

COMS 424: Race, Ethnicity and Media
COMS  361: Propaganda



Course Descriptions


COMS 361: Propaganda

This course in propaganda is designed to address propaganda as a phenomenon and as a technique. Propaganda can be though of as forms of mass persuasion that influence and shape public discourse and action. The course  surveys a selected history of propaganda; investigates the impact of propaganda on individuals and citizens in general and the role we as recipients of propaganda play in the overall structure of information dissemination and cohesion. The course examines the relationship between nationalism and propaganda. It establishes the simultaneous interdependence and distinction of concepts such as propaganda, culture, education, and information.



COMS 424/524 Alternative Media

This course offers an examination of community and alternative media and various alternatives to mainstream media. These alternatives may include radio and video, independent film, the internet and other emergent cultural forms such as pastiche and parody of “culture jamming”. The concepts of mainstream and alternative are explored, and the relationship between alternative media and social practices are considered. In part, the allure of these media has to do with their non-conventional approaches and their critical coverage of contemporary events. 

This course begins with theoretical engagements with the concept of alternative media and moves to diverse, grounded examples in practice. The course examines and engages with the limits of alternative and community media in effecting radical social transformation. The emphasis is on marginalized and subjugated knowledges and the role of diverse media in facilitating their dissemination. The course is designed as a participatory one that encourages students to practically explore the theoretical and creative possibilities, as well as the limitations of alternative media. 

You are expected to actively participate in class discussions. Your participation should be informed by the readings, screenings, and lectures, as well as your own consumption of and experiments with alternative media



 



 


.



Publications


Selected

Abraham, Christiana. "Critical Curating as Decolonial Practice: 
Protests and Pedagogy: Representations, Memories and Meanings—Anatomy of an Exhibition." TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 44, 2022, p. 67-93. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/854453
https://utpjournals.press/doi/full/10.3138/topia-2020-0018


Abraham, Christiana  ""I Won't Take Bail Until We All Get It": Gender, Black Power, 1960s Student activism and the Sir George Williams Affair—An interview with Brenda Dash." TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 44, 2022, p. 48-66Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/854465.
https://utpjournals.press/doi/full/10.3138/topia-2021-0019

Abraham Christiana. Toppled Monuments and Black Lives Matter: Race Gender and Decolonization in the Public Space. An Interview with Charmaine A. Nelson. Atlantis. Vol. 42.1 2021,  pp1-17
https://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis/article/view/5552/4744


Christiana Abraham. 'Race, Gender and 'Difference: Representations of Third World Women in International Development' in Journal of Critical Race Inquiry, Vol.2. No.2 (2015) pp 4-24
https://jcri.ca/index.php/CRI/article/view/4723


https://protestsandpedagogy.ca

Archival Exhibition Protests, Pedagogy and Art

Archival Exhibiton Curator: Protests and Pedagogy: Representations, Memories and Meanings'  
4th Space, Concordia University 

An exhibition commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Students' occupation of the Computer Centre, Sir George Williams University. This is one of Canada's most important student's protests.

The exhibition presents archival images, sounds, documents, media of the events. It also offers current creative artistic interpretations related to legacies and lessons to be learnt from the event. 

https://protestsandpedagogy.ca


Participation activities



Advisory Committee:  President's Taskforce on Anti-Black Racism, Concordia University 
https://www.concordia.ca/provost/initiatives/task-force-anti-black-racism.html

 
Editorial Board member: Atlantis, Critical Studies in Gender, Culture and Social Justice 
https://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis

Back to top

© Concordia University